Look & listen

My boss once told me, "Never listen to what a guy says. Watch what he does." Like you people, he has pretty much endured my GD saga in full detail. He said this in response to the hamster incident, when he remarked that GD was jealous. "But GD never gets jealous," I insisted, "That's what he told me."

"Look at his behavior," he said. "Look at his actions, not his words."

Then he started rattling off examples of other things less than savory men have said:

"She's just a friend."

"It wasn't me."

"Don't worry, I'll never cheat on you."

"I won't ever hit you again, I swear."

Some lies are certainly worse than others. And I think women believe the lies, despite conduct indicating otherwise, because we want to believe them. We want to believe the best in people, and especially in men we're already emotionally attached to.

I'm feeling much better about things, because I can sigh of relief that I at least know that it's done. The lie-rebutted-by-conduct GD told me time and time again was "I am open and honest about things" and "If I have a problem or an issue or have something to say, I'll say it."

I ignored the passive aggressive behavior, the evasiveness, and the fact that I had to force literally him to tell me every problem he had with me. Oh yeah, and the fact that's he's ending this non-relationship by never contacting me again. I clung to his touted philosophy of being open and honest because I wanted to believe it.

Lesson learned. Look at how a person behaves. Not what he says. Easy way or hard way, you'll learn. It's just harder learning the hard way.