July 15, 2013

Phrases We'd Like To Stab In The Face: "It Just Happened"

From Jeanette, who is shaking her damn head at this stupid phrase:
“It just happened” is a god-awful phrase that should be stabbed right in its non-committal bullshit face. I dated this guy for a while who courted the hell out of me. He made me breakfast in bed, asked to make it official, told me he loved me before I had even considered saying it to him, and was all around sweet and seemingly waaaaaaaay into me. And so I waaaaaaaay fell for him. After spending just about every waking (and sleeping) minute together for several months, he summarily broke up with me without warning. He came over one night and explained how “he was too depressed to be in a relationship.” When I asked him why he would pursue me so fervently if that were the case, he used the responsibility-relinquishing-rage-inducingly-pathetic, “it just happened.”

Well, that should be the end of it, right? No. Oh, no. Not a month after we broke up, douchebag is suddenly, quite indiscreetly in a new, serious relationship (social media, no matter how many feeds I hide/unfollow can be a real cruel mistress, and he lives in my hood/we hang at many of the same places/ have friends in common so I can’t NOT see this unfold), so, I text him to point out his contradiction about being “too depressed to be in a relationship” and try to get an authentic answer to why we broke up. He tells me, “It wasn’t like I was looking for a relationship with this girl, it just happened.” 
Is this guy fucking serious? No, relationships and the way he pursues them DO NOT JUST HAPPEN. Conscious decisions were made! If he’s too depressed to be in a relationship, he cannot “oops” fall into one that soon. It reeks of lying, and let’s be honest, all signs point to cheating.  
All this phrase does is impotently pretend there is a lack of control where there is clearly control. It is the verbal equivalent of taking a shit on a sidewalk and then shrugging when someone asks what the hell is going on. “It just happened” is insulting, braindead lipservice. Fuck that noise. He can take that “it just happened” and shove it up his ass and then say, “Oops. It just happened.”
I don't have anything to add, but guys who start dating someone new should own that decision and not act like their relationships are the equivalent of a Costco sample of popcorn chicken that magically fell in their mouths. You reached for the popcorn chicken! You picked it out it! You had a whole tray of popcorn chicken to choose from and you chose the one that is currently in your mouth! In related news, I'm hungry.

3 comments:

ddv said...

As a male with the emotional range of a popcorn kernel (un-popped), I think what "It just happened" really means to the guy is that "I have no way to interpret or understand my feelings. Something inside my brain/heart connection changed and I now "feel" differently."

Yes it is a shitty, shitty answer, but as a man who has struggled to explain all his feels to his lovely, amazing, patient wife, sometimes I really don't know why I said, felt, thought or did what I said, felt, thought or did. It really did just happen...

Anna said...

Wow! Thanks for the articulate explanation. It does shed some light on it for me.

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