Talk Thursday: Mea Culpa

Apologies are cyclical and transactional.  Action means reaction and a round of apologies.  Emotions get tossed like coins at a wishing well, wishing away the circumstances.  It’s when the coins are gone and the surface of the water quiets that the wronged is left with their time to heal and the apologist is left with promises to do better next time and those wishes have dried up and drifted away.

I had a boyfriend that swore to monogamy and ended up cheating three times because he wasn’t sure about us and had to ‘try out’ different guys.  At the time he was ‘the one’ for me, even though I knew, he knew, we all knew that we were not well matched, except in the bed department.  The bed department does not a relationship sustain, unfortunately, but that’s what we latched on to once, then twice, and three times a breakup.  Each time he screwed up (no pun intended), he’d confess his transgression and beg forgiveness and promise never to screw up again and then he’d have a big arrangement of flowers sent to me at work.  Stunning flowers.  Monstrously gorgeous flowers.  By the second set of tears and apologies, I hated the sight of them.  I was “done,” following the third episode, even though my co-workers loved the ambiance and observed that I ‘got more flowers than a dead person’s funeral.’  Each time felt like a funeral, and in a way that’s what each apology and new promise was – a little more of the relationship dying.  The mea cupla became the ritual acknowledgment of passing dreams.  I had said to him each time:  I was more sorry that I didn’t listen to myself better than him.

A decade later, now he’s still with the guy he cheated with the last time.  We talked about what worked and what didn’t work years ago and we both shared how wrong we were for each other (even though the bed department was so right – the bastard still knows exactly what turns me on).  Keeping in touch went from daily to weekly to eventually a few times a year.  When I look back at what he used to mean to me, I know I still see the man he could have been, which is the ruin of all relationships.  When we talk and he looks back, he sees the prior mea culpas I represented.

Our last conversation was a few weeks ago and saying goodbye was a pleasant sort of finality.  We’ve always gone through the ritual of goodbye but his other line rang for work and he had to go and with a soft click he was gone.  He texted me a few moments later and I read it and deleted and turned off my phone.  He was still sorry, and I was still glad I grew a pair and left him.  We were strangers trying to make sense of sorries from years ago, and I don’t want to pretend that we are any closer than we never were.