What Does It Mean When The Seemingly Impenetrable, Emotionally Ungiving Man You Fell In Love With On The Beach Blocks You On WhatsApp
First of all. First of all. How dare you? There have been books, doctorate theses written on this fuckboi type. How could you? How could you? We can no longer give protection of our affection to stoicism. Fuck stoicism.
It doesn’t matter if he had sad eyes that seemed to say more than his mouth, hands both hard and soft, floppy hair that bounces around with a mind of their own. It doesn’t matter if he showed his tenderness through gestures of concern and gratitude. As a woman of words, you know words mean more. You must.
You know — you know— he should’ve said “I love you, too” and not “I know” and then laughed and held you close as you wriggled and beat his chest for having made you feel so, so very simple. You’re a complicated woman. You are made for poetry and literature, and are an inspiration for one too many boy band love songs. You are not made for some brute’s interpretation of Mama You’ve Been On My Mind. Yes, I know I’ve been on your mind you mutt, now are you going to do something about it?
Your friends and the films you grew up with told you — over and over — that the only real sign of a man being into you is if he gets jealous. So you picked a guy — any guy, maybe the Sailor Guy — and tried to make him jealous. But he never got jealous. He just held your hand and said “I know what you’re trying to do, silly”. Silly? Silly?! “Don’t infantalize me”, you screamed and he laughed and said “That’s not a real word, silly”.
That should’ve sirened you off. Not only was he not jealous of the Sailor Guy who was a very appealing choice, he also tried to gaslight you. So you try to clue yourself in, tell yourself that he is just not that into you. But then, just as you were in bed tossing and turning finding ways to hurt him and make a grand exit, the dumb dog turned around and held you so close that you were sure he was dreaming of you. Its funny how people forget to be on guard in their sleep. You’d imagine it’d be like locking your house and making doubly sure before going to bed but it’s not. They forget; people are fragile when they are asleep. And turns out so is he; he is no longer that hunkering god you saw looming over the pool table and wanted to touch but didn’t because you weren’t sure of his PDA policies. He is affectionate in his sleep. So you try to find ways to keep him in bed longer — offer massages, recommend naps. Anything to get him in bed (all puns on my mark and go!).
One day, unsuspectingly, he breaks down in your bed. There are tears, real tears — of fear, of regret, of hurt. You can tell this doesn’t happen often, and then he tells you it doesn’t. Slowly, you find out about his dead sister, his failed marriage, his ambitions, his crippling loneliness. And there for a second, he is human. You’ve never felt closer to him but you feel like you have always known all along that within him was this impossible ocean. You recognised it from the very start and you knew that he recognised the same sadness in you. And maybe that’s why it hurt so much to know that when you wake up in the morning the next day things would go back to the way they were. He would, again, be the impenetrable fortress of smokes and cigars. And you’d just be a bystander, watching from the sidelines as he navigates through his secret sadness that has no name. Except now you know what he protects. And some days all you can do is wish that he’d let you in so that you could be so, so miserable together. “We could be so sad together” — you heard in a forgotten TV show once and those lines flash before you now. You don’t want to heal him, or save him, you just want to find your little corner in his impenetrable fortress and hope that maybe he’ll protect you too. Misery loves company after all.
But now he’s gone. And you are blocked on WhatsApp. You didn’t have a fight, you didn’t “break up” if that’s even possible to do in 2020. He just gone and blocked you. By all logic there has to be an explanation to why he did this. No one, even seemingly impenetrable, emotionally ungiving men, just block communication with someone they had once spent all 24 hours of most days with. So you want to imagine what might have happened. You want to conjure images of him hurting at the thought of being so very far away from you. Of holding back all the things he wants to say but can’t because of the previously mentioned emotional unavailability. Maybe it took too much self control for him to not text you every second of the day so he decided to make it more difficult for himself— you want to imagine. Maybe he didn’t want to text you anymore and blocking you was the only way he could stop himself.
Or maybe he just didn’t want you to text him anymore.
Either way, you’re free now my silly bird. Go fall in love with a Nice Guy.
