Riggle me this, Thank you for being a friend...

"Can't we just be friends?"

This question rings true one of my biggest pet peeves ever in the world. Recently, I had a man I was dating state this after I decided to end our dating whatever it was. The conversation went like this.

"I really think you're an awesome guy. I'd love for us to stay friends," he said while devouring a taco. We were having Mexican food.

"That's a really sweet idea," I responded slowly, "but it's not going to happen."

"What? You don't want to be friends with me?" He seemed to be surprised.

"It's not that. It's just that you struggled to get me to commit to more than one day a week with you to date you. How do you think being friends is gonna go down?"

Let me put it more bluntly. There is no way in Hell we are gonna last as friends. I have to be very clear about this. I think remaining friends works for some people. I'm friends with all but one of my exes. There are times and places when it works. My ex from college, we spent almost a full school year as friends before we dated. Cut to three years later, we broke up, and eventually went back to being friends because that's exactly how we started. That's a pretty decent example of when it can work.

But usually, it doesn't. This situation in particular, I couldn't imagine what the hell was going to happen. I could fathom what he thought we would do. Oh, no sorry, we aren't going to work out, but let's have slumber parties and pillow fights, gossip over wine, braid each other's hair and gush over boys??? Are you mad?

So no, I don't want to be friends. No I don't want to see you move on to the next person and be happy. No, I don't want to be bombarded on social media by your new found happiness, when I'm still struggling with "hold the door" from two weeks ago. No, I don't want to deal with you from this moment forward. And finally NO, I don't have to feel bad for not wanting to be your friend. Because this is how it goes. Your life story is from your perspective. You get to write me into it however you want. My life story is from mine. I get to do whatever I want, and feel however I fucking want to feel about it. So no, I won't apologize for not wanting to be your friend. I wanted more from you, and when I don't get that, I reserve the right to have you in my life to whatever degree I choose. And the same goes for you.

So if nothing else, at least I'm learning to choose the better option for myself. If I can't date you when I want to, then I'm going to just walk away. I have friends. I have lots of them, and most of them I don't see as often as I like, so don't expect me to the friends with someone when I don't really want that from you to begin with.