u cannot out-date your unhealed wounds!
i am genuinely terrible at math, but even i know that the statistics simply are not adding up…
how is it mathematically possible to find the “love of your life” at least four times within a single calendar year? how do people — specifically, how does a grown man — change partners like he is just changing his underwears?
i was sitting across from a batchmate-turned-guy-friend, aka kuya chew, the other day. i was mindlessly stirring my cold foam iced espresso (the absolute goated all-nighter sb drink, by the way) while he enthusiastically dissected the intricate, supposedly soul-binding details of his brand new relationship. it was the classic script, delivered with the exact same breathless, boyish excitement as the last time.
according to him, 1.) she understands him like no one else. 2.) she is “different.” 3.) she is not like the other girls he has dated. 4.)they have so much in common. 5.) she listens to the same niche music. 6.)she doesn’t demand too much, and 7.) the connection is entirely cosmic. he took her out on a date to his favorite sushi place, and now they are already mapping out a shared timeline.
it would have been a deeply cinematic, heartwarming moment if not for one glaring, highly annoying detail: we had this exact same conversation, verbatim, about a completely different girl just three months ago. and another girl three months before that. and another girl right before the previous year ended.
there is a very specific, quiet exhaustion that comes from watching someone you care about absolutely refuse to sit with their own silence. nakakapagod kasi to sit there and listen to the exact same dialogue, just with a newly casted female lead. it feels like i’m being forced to buy a front-row ticket to a terribly written reboot of an indie movie i already hated the first time, and i’m just expected to sit there, smile, and pretend that the plot twist is groundbreaking, lol.
honestly, at this point, we should be paid for the massive amount of emotional labor required when we are the friend — especially the female friend — who has to sit there and validate this cycle. i have to memorize a new name, a new face, a new backstory, and a new set of freaking red flags every business quarter.
ako, when i exit a connection, it must be surgically clean. but i know for sure that the aftermath is always incredibly heavy. i take a painfully long time to heal. i have to sit in the wreckage of what i just broke or what just broke me. i bawl my eyes out until i am physically tired of crying. being the overly analytical person that i am, i dissect the toxic patterns. i process the grief until it is completely out of my system, making sure i leave absolutely nothing on the table so i never, ever have to look back. (of course, my latest relationship status is very different now, haha, but the principle of how i handle endings remains the same!)
but some people? pucha, they don’t even let the metaphorical body get cold.
hindi pa nga lumalamig yung issue from the last breakup debrief, you already have a new talking stage. hindi pa nga tapos yung sad boy, gym-bro healing era aesthetic mo sa instagram stories, may naka-soft launch na agad sa dump account mo. fuck men and their dump accounts, thank you baby ko at wala kang dump : ) you are already bringing someone new to the exact same restaurant you used to frequent with your ex. there must always be someone new to be obsessed over. there is always another human being to start a conversation from scratch with.
honestly, how do you even do that? where do you get the logistical and emotional bandwidth?
the sheer administrative work of a new talking stage is exhausting enough na. let alone having to explain your childhood trauma, your favorite color, your weird little quirks, and your entire life story to a new person every ninety days . it sounds like a literal nightmare to me. you gotta introduce the existence of your girl friends and make them understand na tropa mo lang kami at wala siyang dapat ikaselos, again and again. you have to do the small talk all over again. you have to figure out how they text, what their boundaries are, and what makes them laugh. it is exhausting just watching it happen from the sidelines, tbh.
they treat new girls like a band-aid slapped over an actively bleeding wound. the moment the silence of a breakup gets a little too loud, the moment the reality of being alone in their room starts creeping up on them, they immediately outsource their emotional regulation to a completely new person.
men, in particular, are so incredibly guilty of this. instead of learning how to self-soothe, instead of sitting with the absolute discomfort of their own shattered egos, they just find a new girl to project their needs onto. “moving on” becomes less about actual character development and more about just frantically filling a vacant seat so they don’t look lonely on the internet, and so they have someone to constantly tell them they are still worthy of love.
i am trying my hardest here. i want to have a wider perspective on it as much as possible. gusto kong intindihin that maybe there is an aspect in his life that lacks love, which is why he constantly seeks it in romantic prospects. maybe he just genuinely does not know how to exist inside his own head.
and that is exactly when i feel a little bit of pity. but more than that, i feel a massive wave of disappointment in our circle.
i sit there and think: how are we as his friends that this guy doesn’t feel loved enough that he needs to feel validated time and time again by a stranger? is our platonic love not enough? are the late-night phone calls where i listen to him vent, the random coffee dates, and the constant emotional support so inadequate that he still feels this gaping hole that only a new romantic prospect can temporarily plug?
nakakapagod marinig yung rant niya that he always ends up with the wrong girls or that he is always left behind. he complains about feeling drained, but then you see him voluntarily proceed to add bodies to his roster like it’s the most natural thing to do when you get out of a relationship.
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you complain about being treated poorly, but you treat your own heart like a revolving door. you act like a community dick but demand the loyalty of a once-in-a-lifetime soulmate. my gosh, you cannot have it both ways.
guys, believe me. i love physical touch. hindi ako santo, i like the feeling of skin to skin. the intimacy of it is beautiful. but fucking hell, i feel like it is being thrown around so lightly in this day and age!!!
i fully believe, as much as this kind of goes a little off my tibak-manileñafied-and-very-liberated-gen-z-persona, that who you are with is a direct reflection of how much you love yourself. being liberated isn’t just about having the freedom to sleep with whoever you want; it’s about having the agency and self-respect to say no when the connection isn’t even worth your energy.
you wouldn’t find the sanctuary of being alone if you keep clinging to another person just to feel loved. the absolute cheapest version of intimacy is the one you use just to distract yourself from your own thoughts. di mapakali sa lungkot kaya mauuwi na lang sa kantot?
meron talagang terrifying lack of breathing room in that kind of timelines. if you are constantly jumping from one talking stage to another, from one defining-the-relationship conversation to the next, when do you actually get the time to process what just happened? when do you sit down, look in the mirror, and confront your own toxic contributions to the dynamic that just spectacularly failed?
you can’t just blame the last girl, call her crazy or incompatible, and then jump into the arms of the next one without realizing that you are the common denominator in all your failed relationships. if every single partnership burns down after three months, maybe it is time to stop buying new matches and start looking at why your house is so flammable.
of course, as a friend, i am happy that he is no longer sad. i want my friends to be happy. but you literally were just devastatingly sad a day or two ago, and now i’m gonna see you doing lovey-dovey shit again? so what were you doing when we were on a call and you were crying your eyes out in front of me and i was consoling you? were you swiping on bumble while i was giving you a pep talk? were you setting up a coffee date with this new girl while i was actively validating your grief?
it feels like a scam. it feels like you weaponized my empathy. sinayang mo yung oras ko.
it would be so much better to my liking and understanding if you were flying out to a new destination after your heart gets broken. take a solo trip. go to the gym and actually lift weights instead of just taking mirror selfies. focus on your career. buy a playstation and lock yourself in your room for a month. literally do anything else that requires you to sit with yourself.
but no, you are just onto the next dating set. it’s like if there’s a massive dating pool, you didn’t even get out of the water to dry off and reflect on why you almost drowned; you just doggy-paddled to a completely different corner of the pool and pretended you discovered a new ocean.
we need to stop romanticizing this rapid-fire serial monogamy as a flex in this generation. we act like bouncing back immediately means you won the breakup. men love to post the cryptic instagram stories : two glasses of wine, a girl’s hand across the table, a steering wheel shot in bgc or antips, just to prove to the ex that they are doing completely fine, that they are desirable, that they are moving forward.
but honestly? it just looks like emotional cowardice. mukha kang tanga. i am one of his friends, i know he wouldn’t take offense in my vulgarity and straightforwardness.
it takes actual guts kaya to be alone. it takes a massive amount of bravery — true masculinity, if you really want to get down to it — to look at your shattered ego, your unresolved issues, and your terrible taste in women, and say, “okay, i need to fix my own foundation before i drag another innocent girl into my mess.”
hindi yung hung up ka pa nga sa ex mo, may bago ka na namang kausap??? tapos you’ll go mia when you’re both happy. you will just remember us, your friends, when things go down south. gusto naming malaman yung magagandang nangyayari sa buhay mo, hindi lang yung lagi ka na lang malungkot. we deserve to be included not just in tough times, you sick bastard.
it is so much easier to find a distraction than it is to find yourself. it is so much easier to tell a new girl that she is beautiful than it is to look in the mirror and admit that you are terrified of being by yourself.
you cannot out-date your unhealed wounds, bae. you cannot outsource your peace of mind to a girl whose middle name you didn’t even know ninety days ago. your trauma doesn’t magically disappear just because someone new laughs at your jokes in the dim lighting of a sushi restaurant. the void inside you does not shrink just because you stuffed a new body into it.
sometimes the absolute best thing you can do for yourself — and for the people around you who are tired of watching you self-destruct — is to refuse to recast the main character role in your life every time the season changes. yang mga dinedate mo, pwedeng mawala yan pero kami? ako? we’ll be at your wedding day bro. don’t leave your day ones!
take a gap year from dating. figure out what your favorite coffee order is without someone else sitting across from you. learn how to spend a friday night in your own room without feeling like the walls are caving in. let the passenger seat of your car stay empty for a while, kawawa naman si bravo.
heal first. heal thoroughly. take some actual accountability for the space you take up in other people’s lives. because the phrase “love of my life” is going to turn into a really sad, incredibly pathetic punchline if you keep assigning it to a stranger every three months.
