[long post about college friends and how they act about my recent breakup — i am doing just fine so feel free to ignore — just trying to process things and that involves long paragraphs of sorting my thoughts]

today i was hanging out with mila and aria and i joked that it was a red flag that oliver doesn’t like the little robots that drive around campus delivering food. and aria said “that guy was a walking red flag in general” and i said what do you mean?? and she just started listing things and some of them i can see where she’s coming from and some of them i can’t. but like for example she said he’s a bad listener and self-centered and doesn’t care about other people. and i would say that he does care about other people, and he’s just not good at showing it. but i actually do think that the way he was so focused on me when he liked me is maybe a bad thing after all. like he focused on me and didn’t really pay attention to my other friends. mila says she felt uncomfortable when we were in a group of three before me and oliver started dating because oliver would only pay attention to me. and i do wish that i had noticed that and taken it for all of what it is, instead of just seeing that he liked me, if i saw that for him liking somebody in that way makes such a difference, because it makes sense that now that he doesn’t like me anymore, our relationship is entirely recontextualizing when from my perspective we could have just stayed close friends.

anyway another thing that aria said is that specifically, he doesn’t pay attention to ella. who is another friend of aria’s and sort of me and mila’s, which is sort of a layered issue. cause i know why oliver doesn’t pay attention to ella, it’s because he doesn’t like her because she makes her friendship to me into a big performance even though we hardly know each other. like whenever we see each other and i’m with someone she doesn’t know (for example when my mom was here) she goes “ohmygosh i’m your biggest fan it’s the legendary arthur” or she will like shake my hand or whatever and be like “wow it’s SO good to see you” even though we hardly know each other, and she doesn’t act like that when it’s just the two of us. it almost feels like she’s making fun of me, even though i know she doesn’t mean it like that. but the point is she can make me uncomfortable at times, and the first time oliver met her was a time she was acting like that, and afterwards he said “who was that??” and i said “oh we hardly know each other” and he said he hates when people are insincere and put on a show like that and that it reminds him of his dad. so i can’t exactly take it as a red flag that he doesn’t like her specifically. i think it’s maybe a green flag to not give a lot of credit to somebody who treats your partner weird like that?? i sure appreciated that somebody else in the world agreed with me on how it felt.

but anyways people have been pointing out issues with oliver and they all have something to be said for their arguments. but the thing that’s upsetting me right now is this: aria listed so many things she doesn’t like about oliver, including “i mean, it’s oliver. his personality is just awful” (which!!!! jeez!!!! going to have to disagree on that front?? and really…. do they even know each other?? i don’t know where she’s drawing her judgements from honestly cause they’ve hardly interacted) but what upsets me is that every time i’ve mentioned oliver for the past few months, no matter what it’s about, aria will just say “imagine being in a relationship” or like “oh i wish i had a boyfriend” (also irritating is that — although i’m starting to question the sincerity of oliver’s gender concerns as opposed to sloppily covered up commitment issues — i have told everyone, more than once, that he wanted to be referred to as my partner, not my boyfriend, and nobody i know has cared at all)

and i asked today when she was listing red flags i was like “why didn’t you tell me any of this while we were dating??” and she said “oh well i was just happy for you to be dating anybody even if it’s him.” and that pisses me off so bad!!!! don’t get me wrong i feel good about my decision to date oliver even if it ended badly, and i don’t want to take back these past few months and have it end sooner than it did, but i would love it if people didn’t shield me from their legitimate opinions of my partner just because they’d rather me be dating an asshole than comfortably single?? and the fact that this whole time she’s believed me to be dating an asshole, and still guilt tripped me constantly for being in a relationship even though she clearly believed it to be a bad one???? that really upsets me. and it’s not like we’re incredibly close but she’s one of the only people i have in college (especially now that all the alcohol party people maybe belong to oliver and won’t ever talk to me again) and i would like to feel like she respects me enough to share her real opinions about my partner before my relationship falls apart?? is that too much to ask?? and just. the idea that she has resented him this entire time, and still been going on and on about how lucky i am to be in any relationship at all.

i don’t know. that’s my vent. i’m just irritated and i wish everyone i knew here hadn’t been so busy treating me and my relationship as their little pet “aww well aren’t you cute” or “i am SO jealous of you” and just valuing the fact that i’m in a relationship over every actual qualitative judgement they have. even if i don’t agree with everything they’re saying and automatically regret this relationship. i’m upset that all of these concerns are only coming out now, and that nobody seems to have any concern for how this breakup is actually affecting me, or how the relationship affected me while it lasted. they were just happy for me that i had a “boyfriend”. and mean to me all the time that they didn’t. this is almost entirely about aria, but a few other people have said things to a similar effect and i just wish i could trust anybody to communicate with me when there’s literally anything i can do about it. vent over i guess.