Life and Love in Canada

girlinseoul:

This is the question I have been pondering.

Is it really okay to write this off to cultural?

Do all Korean guys do this when they break up? (I’m assuming “no” but it seems common)

Maybe someone with more experience and insight about Korea can give an answer.

When my nice co-teacher enquires- I will be telling her the way he did it and maybe she has some insight for me

The Pilot did it to me once. At the end of last year we were having a rough patch, we were fighting more than we normally did (which was never) and things had been a bit strained between us for a couple months leading up to it. I was going away on vacation for New Year’s for 2 weeks, and I’d been visiting my family for Christmas before that. I wanted to see him before I went away again, and we had made plans to see each other before I left. He blew me off (for another girl I had assumed), and at about 11 that night I sent an angry text message saying something along the lines of “if you’re going to ditch me for someone else and not even tell me, maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore. All I asked was for you to be honest and you couldn’t even do that”. Of course, I didn’t really mean it, what I meant was “call you me you son of a bitch and tell me what’s up”.

The next morning (5 hours before I’m set to leave) I wake up to 3 text messages, the first saying angry and pretty much telling me I’d completely overreacted, and then finally one text message saying “I’m sorry things ended this way, but you’re right, we shouldn’t talk anymore. You were good to me and I’m not a good enough man for you.”. I was appropriately de-friended on facebook, deleted from MSN, and effectively erased from his life. It felt like the breath had been knocked from my chest… knowing that I’d inadvertently sent the messsage that led up to our non-relationship’s demise, and that someone who I cared deeply about and considered my closest friend could just cut me out of his life like that, without even trying to talk to me. I was hurt, but most of all, I was angry. I was furious, livid even. Angry that he’d do this to me, even more angry that he couldn’t even wait to do it until after I came back from the States. Angry that he had to have known he was ruining my entire vacation, and I would be spending most of the day and 12 hour bus ride to NYC bawling my eyes out.

I called him twice, neither call was answered. And because I’m not one to not act rashly when I’m angry and hurting, I sent him a text. And, GIS it was nowhere near as nice as your messages to Tomato (I am in awe of your ability to not be angry and curse the devil out, and how you haven’t called him yet ngl). Mine simply said “Fuck you, you goddamn sno of a bitch. Fuck you for you not being man enough to try to talk to me about this. Fuck you for not even trying to get me to stay. Fuck you for being petty and small and ending a year and half of friendship and love over a text message. Fuck you for not respecting me enough to even try to talk to me and do it to my face. And finally, fuck you for letting me be stupid enough to love you and call you my best friend, when clearly you’re not worthy of any love. I’m sorry for what I did wrong, but mostly I’m sorry that I ever let you waste so much life and love on someone who clearly didn’t feel the same way in the end. Goodbye _____.”

Two hours later I got a text message back saying “We’ll talk when you get back from New York. Have a good trip”. And we talked when I came back from my trip . We both apologized for how we acted, I yelled and cried and in general acted like an ass, but in the end we came to an agreement that from then on if one of us was mad at the other, we would talk it out. I told him that everyone who has ever been important to me has eventually cut me out of their life in the way that he tried to, and the fact that he could do that severely diminished my trust in him, that we would really have to work to ever be able to trust each other the way we did before again. And amazingly, it worked. Before, if we had an argument or one of us was angry, we wouldn’t discuss it with each other. I had a fear that if I was any emotion other than happy and easy-going, he would run from me and I’d never see him again (because that is what my life has taught me). I explained to him that when he would say “I don’t want to deal with this/you” it did nothing but hurt, and make me even angrier and did nothing but lead to the eventual giant fight that led to us not speaking for 3 months the first time. Amazingly, since then, we’ve managed to talk through fights and disagreements, not run away from them.

I’m not sure if being here for 8 years changed the common Korean attitude of ~saving face~ and not wanting to deal with conflict like I’ve read about on tumblr, or if my verbal bitch slapping talked some sense into him. Maybe even being with me rubbed off on him, or maybe in the 2 years we’ve known each other we’ve grown and matured, I really have no idea. I guess the point I’m trying to make here, is that the text message break up doesn’t always equal the end. At least for me, while being painful and shitty, it marked the beginning of a significant change for the better. Even if we hadn’t gotten back together (even in our non-relationship fwb sense that we decided upon), knowing that he at least respected me enough to try to talk to me when I came back was an improvement over the technological wasteland breakup.