Author and Columnist
Why, precisely, is it that Kate and her friends objectify people to justify their actions?
It is psychologically easier to have you be some stock character. Then they don't have to feel bad for you because they got what they wanted. It is, I'm sorry to tell you, a natural part of this process.
In a sense, they are becoming a snide monolith, losing their individuality to you. Which is to say, objectification is not one-way.
Throughout this... emotional melee... I have always remembered that she is a human being, one whom I'm infinitely fond of despite the artifice she covers herself in to be "free," and I love her as much as I would love anyone who had shown me the depths their soul can reach.
I agree. You love her. I love her, though my love for the Kate I know is a far different beast than what you feel right now.
If you know someone that well, you love them in a way that lasts. If it is real love of a sort, it survives even the end of the relationship.
But, as I have told you before, the most loving thing you can do -- for her and for you -- is to let her go for good.
All I am asking is for her to see me as I am.
She can't. And she does.
It is not satisfying. She sees facets of you that you cannot or will not see.
Rather, I wish she would not allow others to further this denigration of me.
She can't. And she won't. She is breaking away from you. The people who are tearing you down are her life now. You are not. Her loyalties are increasingly with those who would mock you as an impediment.
It is, again, natural.
So she should see me as I AM. Not the symbol of "boyfriend" and "relationship" which she associates with her systematic oppression and her perceived loss of freedom and gained experiences. I am not a symbol and do not wish to be, now or ever.
You may not be a symbol. You are certainly not her boyfriend or her relationship, even if you once were. And yet, you cannot cease to be symbolic because you had happily been synonymous with these words before, when it benefitted you.
I am not discrediting your desire to bristle at all you are going through. This is your experience and you want to push back at what seems like disrespect from someone whom you thought loved you too well to allow this. But she is young. She will have to work her way through this, as you are her first long term relationship and her first with a man.
Much later, you will spend a year not being friends with a woman you love because she thinks she is a symbol to you. She thinks that you believe she is your ex-girlfriend and not your dearest friend.
And you let her go. You let her have that year before she told you that she missed having you in her life. I hope that she will always be a dear friend, but she would not have been had you clung. What you go through Kate taught you this, though it is not a direct lesson.