Being Friends and Ending Relationships

During our four years of high school R and I were best friends with two guys, J and D. J and D were great fun and R and I spent as much time with them as possible. We ate lunch together every day.

One September lunch period, we were sitting around talking about prom, which obviously, was months and months away.

Someone (probably R, she was the idea gal) suggested that the four of us go together. This was before I started dating JLC by at least a month, maybe two.

The rest of us thought it was a rad idea and so it was a date. I would officially be going with D and R would go with J but it was totally a foursome thing and definitely a FRIEND thing.

So when I started dating JLC a month or so later, I didn’t even thing about prom. My plans were set, and I wasn’t going to change them.

As prom loomed ever closer, JLC started making comments about us going.

I informed him that he wouldn’t be attending prom that year, at least not with me. He was a sophomore, so unless he found a junior or a senior to take him, he wasn’t going.

I told him about the plans R and I had made with J and D and how I had no intention of breaking those plans.

He wasn’t happy but what could he do? He did insist that I PROMISE to go with him the next year, even if we weren’t together. Because obviously, I was a woman of my word. Ugh. Whatever. I’m going to say right here to anyone and everyone, teenager, pre-teen, adult, elderly, EVERYONE, if you make a promise to someone while in a relationship with that someone for a future event and you break up before that event happens? Guess what? You CAN BREAK THAT PROMISE. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do or go anywhere you don’t want to go with someone you’re no longer in a relationship with even if you promised to do that thing or go to that place while you in the relationship.

I mean, come on! Why would you want to go to prom with your now EX-boy/girlfriend? Why?!?

My junior prom was so much fun. J, R, D and I had a blast. There were no romantic expectations, there was no pressure, it was just friends having a blast with each other. We went from prom to R’s house where we watched horror movies until 4am and crashed on her parents’ living room furniture.

Senior prom? Was not so much fun. I went with JLC because at that time we were still officially dating but we were on the brink of breaking up.

The weeks before prom were fraught with tension because I refused to ride to prom in his mom’s station wagon and his Ranchero had bitten the dust months before. Not that I’d have consented to riding in that beast to prom either.

I knew I was being a bitch about it and maybe I was trying to get him to break up with me over the whole car thing but I dug my heels in and was ready to die on that hill.

I offered to borrow my mom’s car and pick him up but he was a chauvinist pig and wouldn’t have anything to do with that. So I offered to just meet him at prom. I’d drive myself in my mom’s car (she had a Zephyr, it was a neat car) and he could drive his mom’s stupid station wagon and we could meet at the door.

He didn’t go for that either. I think he ended up borrowing a car from someone he went to church with.

I didn’t care. I just knew I’d won that battle and it meant that when it came time to break up with him, I’d win that one too.

When you’re relationship denigrates to the point that there are battles to be won…it’s time to just let it go. Break up and move on. Everyone will be happier, eventually.

Promise.