A week ago yesterday I was sitting in my home on a couch next to a beautiful girl. Today I am sitting in a creaky old apartment, feeling tumultuous and a little more hollow than I’m used to. What happened?
One of the ugly realities of becoming an “adult” is that you have to begin to take stock of the mental landscape of your partner and yourself. After all, this isn’t high school or even college, where casual affairs turn into long, drawn out relationships that have to end when each of you go your separate ways. Here in the realm of the adult, the facade of “circumstances beyond your control” is removed and you are left with the reality of situations where people are in control. In my relationship with Natalie, coming to terms with that reality ultimately forced our respective hands and we ended up folding.
I would like to chalk this up to a number of circumstantial things. Things like the fact that I might be moving and going to graduate school and that, if she moved with me, she’d be abandoning a number of professional leads that would get her started on an “adult” career. Things like the fact that I can’t concentrate and study with noise and that she thrives on. Things like this, that are comfortably (and sometimes annoyingly) beyond my control.
The reality is that there was something else. Call it different states of the human condition, if you’d like. We were quite simply at different points in our respective lives. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we could have done more. Would it have worked? I have no idea. No fucking idea. But that reality—the fact that you could have done more—undermines the certainty that this is, indeed, the best course of action for both of us. At times, it makes things downright unbearable.
There is a positive note, which is that we’ll most likely come out of this the best of friends. Things are already shaping up to be that way, even though we toe the line of “just friends” and “couple” quite often. But even this is double-edged: I have come to expect a rupture that ends it all—things are messy, bordering on irreconcilable, but the fight fuels your self-righteous indignation and you are thankful that you are now free of those shackles. With nothing remotely like this pushing us apart, with this “adult” treatment of our conditions, the emotional pain isn’t cut with anything that makes it more bearable. This is pure pain.
I am dealing as best as I can, but I find myself longing for the youthful days where things were less complicated and love was not up to me or her, but merely a matter of circumstance.
March 3rd, 2008
by JB
I remember a time when you loved this girl with an intensity that was almost painful to watch. And I watched the long frustrating downward slide, the constant questioning, the will to optimism at the slightest sign of improvement or change. But quite simply, from what I have been able to observe, you are both nice, decent, smart people that seem to be wired very differently with respect to intensity, interests, and goals. Obviously, at one point, you operated more in tandem, or so you both thought. And while I can’t speak for N., I know that you did what you could to try to keep this relationship alive and were unwilling to see it end. So do not be too hard on yourself. For the record, I don’t think that you or N. could have done anything that would have changed the outcome. Relationships generally do not succeed on will alone.
Nor should you trivialize. This did not come about just because the TV was on more than you would have liked. As time progresses, you may be able to address other, perhaps more fundamental incompatibilities, unflinchingly.
As you have learned, civility can be painful. It doesn’t enable you to take the high moral ground, or to feel righteously wounded and crawl into your (non-Platonic) cave and lick your wounds for awhile. You just have to get on with the business of living. Not particularly dramatic. And hard to feel sorry for yourself or have others feel sorry for you when it’s all so…. courteous.
I suggest a trip to Vegas to help you get through this phase. And don’t be afraid to lean on your friends. They are there for you.
March 16th, 2008
by Jim
I have no useful advice for you. It sucks. It will continue to suck; and it will most likely suck again later. Or as a great poet once said: “Life sucks and then you die.”
But perhaps that is how you should treat it, a death Irish Wake style. Be glad that you were able to reach such a point, and most likely will again.
Also, in the words of the immortal Vince Vaughn: “Vegas baby, Vegas.”
March 18th, 2008
by Jesse
The Author
Jim, it’s good to see that you’re still alive.
It’s funny you mention Vegas…I actually was at a wedding there this weekend and participating in all the shenanigans therein. It wasn’t exactly cathartic as I’d hoped, though, as I’m one of those people that has to take some time to mull things over before diving into the hedonism that is only possible without the ties of a relationship.
But still…funny you mention it.
March 18th, 2008
by elaine
i just left you a really long comment, but it was lost because i forgot to enter my e-mail addy.
bummer.
i don’t have time to type it again right now. maybe later. or i can just tell you tomorrow.
ugh.