Breaking up is hard to do.

Don't say that this is the end.

— Neil Sedaka

It really isn't as big a deal as it would have been a year or so ago, but since I told you about Kathy and Portia developing a relationship I think it only fair that I tell you about "The Breakup."

Over the course of the last few months of 2012, Kathy and Portia's relationship cooled. Kathy seems to think that Portia finally got the idea that Kathy wasn't going anywhere. Also, Portia had begun to be more and more negative, again according to Kathy. I like to think she just was more and more her true self.

But at any rate, after she and I returned from spending the holidays in her home state to where we live, she noticed that Portia had suspended all contact with her, down from contact at least once a day. Kathy was fine with that but curious, so she texted Portia to get the scoop. Portia then set up a meeting to have a "talk".

Portia then had a dramatic conversation with Kathy that seemed an awful lot like a break up meeting. Portia claimed that Rick, my stepson, had advised her that it wasn't healthy to keep having a connection to my life and so she was ending her relationship with Kathy so as not to have a window into my life. Of course, that was the only reason she had pushed a relationship in the first place, but I digress.

She said that I would always have access to my stepdaughter Tina (who mysteriously is nonetheless never available to me when I want her) and that their mutual friend could still be friends with Kathy. Kathy acted like this was a loss and then went on her merry way.

And I feel better than I used to.

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Neil Sedaka.

Whenever I call you friend...

I had the pleasure of watching my football team (lose, alas) in the company of a friend of mine and his girlfriend.  Even though he and I have been workplace sports friends for nearly three years, this was the first time he and I have been together in a purely social setting.  It was nice, but it was also a reminder of two problems for me.

Problem number one is that I don't have a lot of friends here locally.  I'm not sure the reasons, but even though I have lived where I live for nearly fifteen years now, I have had a lot of trouble making friends here.  Granted I think some of that is that for ten of those years, I was more invested in my marriage than any personal relationships and my friends back home could fill any gaps I may have had with a simple phone call.  But even after the wife left, I found it hard to develop relationships and to move them from their original location (work) and into my personal life.  But that may come from the other problem.

In growing up in my FOO with The Big Secret®, we weren't allowed friends over.  Can't have people knowing your business and all of that.  So I didn't have a lot of opportunities to learn the finer points of social interaction and I couldn't reciprocate in kind to my friends going up.  I went over my friend Felix's house for weeks when I was in grade school.  His family even fed me.  Felix came to mine once (just the outside) and I got chewed out for it.  So I generally don't know how I made friends and find them a sort of lucky miracle.

At any rate, while I am still a hermit, my socialization skills and my socializing has improved and while I certainly need my alone time, I am having the company of others more and enjoying it.

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A song from the soundtrack of a movie I wrote: