Wut Reason

So I'm back in my hometown to visit my parents.

I hadn't told them about the breakup. It was easy to avoid the subject when I was 400 miles away at the other end of California, communicating by text. Before I went on the trip home mom asked me on WeChat if my boyfriend was coming with me this visit. I typed "Just me." Which was technically not a lie.

Not the case when I am physically at the same room as my mom.  She asked how the boyfriend was doing, and I told her we broke up.

She asked why, and I realized I lacked the Chinese vocabulary to explain it to her properly. I tried to explain that there was a communication issue, but that didn't quite work out. So the end explanation was something akin to he didn't think I doted on him enough, and he thought it was too hard to talk to me about it to fix it.  That was good enough. It wasn't going to change anything anyway.

I held my breath for what I knew was coming. Low grade blame game. It was going to be my fault.

Not that mom wasn't gentle about it, and I don't think she was trying to be mean about it, but I knew she genuinely was going to think it was my fault and needed to tell me so I could fix it for next time.

Super rich coming from someone who never had to go through the dating game. (Arranged marriage.)

"I think you doted on him too much." She said, both to demonstrate she was incredulous at his stupid reason to dump me AND to tell me what I did wrong.

*sigh*

"I know, right? And he couldn't even tell me about it properly so I could try to fix it. He always made fun of me for being shy and not wanting to talk to people, and here he said it was 'too hard' to talk to me about it."

"Shy?" Mom was surprised. "I always thought you were very brave talking to people... You do kind of look like you're in your 20's though."

Where was mom going with this? I would find out about 10 minutes later.

"So maybe you should stop buying stuffed animals."

Oh, okay.

"Mom, that wasn't it. He collects toys like me too.  It wasn't that."

Somehow, in her mind, the stuffed animals must be the reason he dumped me. Or maybe she thought it was the way I acted that attracted non-serious man-children who wouldn't commit.

She was about as supportive as I expected, and it was enough. She was consoling and gladly painted the ex as the bad guy in the picture to try to get me to stop shedding tears and how I shouldn't take him back even if he tried, but she genuinely thought there was something wrong in the way I was and the way I acted that lead to me getting dumped.

I knew she was hurt too.  I blame myself for it.  Even if he was a bad guy and was the sole reason I'm now single, I invited him into our lives and we were all negatively impacted when he left.

"Don't take him back, even if he tries."

"Yeah..." I replied.

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