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Regrets | Jun 23 2003

I used to claim I didn’t regret things. Maybe when I said that, I didn’t. More likely I did and didn’t know I did. I regret breaking up with K. I mean the fourth time. I don’t regret the first. I had no choice the first. The second and third times were her doing, so I can hardly regret those. Although it’s true that I drove her to it the third time, so if I wanted to regret that, I could. I don’t though. I only regret the fourth.

If I wanted, I could regret getting back together the second time. Also the third. I could even regret getting back together the fourth time, if I wanted. But what’s the point? You do what you do and what happens happens. It’s too easy to look back and say you shouldn’t have done what you did, given what happened. How were you supposed to know what was going to happen?

I knew what was going to happen. I mean the fourth time. She called me and said she wanted to get back together and to do it right this time. She said she loved me, this being only the second time she ever said that. The first time was during the third time, meaning our third relationship. That time she didn’t actually say she loved me but that she had told her therapist she loved me. In response I said that her therapist knew better than to believe her. I now regret saying this. It was mean. All the mean things I ever said to her, I regret. Although it was certainly true that she didn’t love me.

The fact that she didn’t love me was why I broke up with her the first time. It’s also why she broke up with me the second. The third time was different though; that time we broke up because I didn’t love her.

Actually the third time may not count as a time because all it was, was sex. Once a week we would have dinner, talk about our weeks, and fuck.

In order to distinguish this from “going out” or “having a relationship,” or “being together,” we would say that we had “an arrangement.”—an arrangement she ended because it prevented her from going out with or having a relationship with or being together with anyone else.

She told me this on the phone. She said that my comment about her therapist had hurt her and that she now wanted to end our arrangement. The moment we hung up, I returned to what I was doing before she called. Five minutes later I realized how callous I was being and stopped.

The second time she told me she loved me was when she called and said she wanted to get back together for the fourth time. This was how the fourth time began, with her phone call. In response I told her that I loved her too, which I now regret because I didn’t really love her.

Also, while having sex we would sometimes say that we loved each other, but that was different because we were having sex at the time. Point being: I don’t regret it.

Here are the things I regret:

Everything else I’m okay with.