Soft Rocked by Someone
Okay. First, I'm going to link an entry. The rest of this entry is going to be talking about that, okay? I encourage everyone to go and read it first and form your own opinion, because this is going to be something that triggered in my mind after reading something about seven years old now. I am using that entry as a type specimen, as an illustration of a concept rather than trying to tie it to someone specific. For all I know, the person who wrote it has grown up and gone past that. Still, read what I linked.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the type specimen of a passive-aggressive wimp.

Understand something - I was friends with Elaine without any romance for many years when I was in love with her. I went through many years of her being with Steve and talking about him without a complaint or a protest, or even any bitterness toward her.

If she took something I said and used it in service of her relationship? Well, folks, I had given that to her. She wasn't beholden to some idea I had in my head. I was her friend despite being smitten with her because I had made a conscious decision that amounted to "she doesn't want me as more than a friend, and I'm a big enough person to just be that friend."

There was no outmaneuvering. Any bitterness I felt toward Steve was the same sort that you feel toward someone who gets the last copy of the book you want to buy because they were there first. I promised myself that if I couldn't be her friend legitimately, if I couldn't keep myself from pining after her hopelessly and started resenting her for that, that it would be time to stop being her friend because I was crossing a line.

She couldn't betray my affections, because I didn't speak them or act upon them, because I had made a choice I knew then and now was the right one. I loved her, and sure, it hurt at times - but love means that you want someone to be happy, and if you can't give them happiness you want them to be with someone who can.

But, of course, there's always the alternative. There's always the option to assume that the other person must know how you feel, and they would feel the same way if they weren't involved with some horrible demon who doesn't deserve them and isn't nearly as good as you are. Just make a long list of your imaginary rival's negative qualities - and that rival is imaginary, all right, not because said rival doesn't exist but because they aren't your rival. You aren't in competition with them. You've never even been in the running, due in no small part to the fact that you've neither stated that you want to be in the running nor stopped to consider that your opposition might actually have positive qualities you lack.

Evaluate, and act. Either make your feelings clear or choose not to, deal with it or don't. But don't act like there's some horrible, arbitrary nonsense guiding the universe that placed someone you like with another person. It's only arbitrary so long as you let things happen without trying to guide the course of events.

If you don't do anything, nothing slips away. You give it away by your own inaction.