I acted quickly. My first true act of pluck took place yesterday morning. I think that I behaved with honesty and kindness, but did what I needed to do for me, rather than concerning myself solely with the other person in the equation. I ended a burgeoning relationship. We'd been dating for about 2 months. Generally the unspoken agreement on match.com is that you can just sort of wander away without explanation if things aren't gelling appropriately. But if you're 2 months in, texting and talking on the phone regularly, and the other person is saying things like: "I think I'm falling in love with you" (which I think means he already is but is testing the waters to see what the response might be).... well when all of these things have happened, you have no choice but to perform an actual break up.
I don't think I've ever actually broken up with anyone. Not as an adult anyway. I suppose in high school, I did. Nearly three decades ago I told Jimmy Groeling, my first boyfriend during freshman year in high school, that I wasn't ready for a relationship. That I still preferred hanging out at home with my family on Friday nights over going to keg parties (this is what compromised a "relationship" at Haddonfield High School in 1984). And it was true. I hated going to parties where drunken couples groped each other, lined up 3 or 4 in a row on a couch in someone's basement. It all seemed so gross and terrifying to me. I can only hope against hope that my two boys might feel the same way as they approach 13 (I doubt they will).
During my senior year in high school, I broke up with Mike, a real boyfriend. My first love. That one was tougher. It was a confluence of circumstance that drove me to it. I was falling apart, my gymnastics career careening to a not very graceful or dignified end. My parents not wanting to notice, and continuing to drive me forward to an Olympic spot which was clearly not going to happen. And even though Mike made it all better I just couldn't hold him in my chaotic life. And he cheated. All the time. But I wouldn't have sex with him, holding tightly to my virginity for some hard to classify reason. And because I wouldn't sleep with him I didn't really blame him for sneaking in some nookie on the side. I knew he loved me. He did. But the cheating was an excuse to expel the unmanageable chaos from my life so that I could focus on my failing gymnastics career, my anorexia and my parents who seemed to hate me. Fun. I broke his heart and mine. My first experience with love sickness. No fun.
In college, no boyfriends therefore no break-ups. Post college, no boyfriends. Then I met Winslow. We met, we dated, we moved in, we got married, we had kids. We got divorced. A modern day love story. So I suppose getting divorced counts as a break-up and I initiated it. But it unfolded after years and years of struggle and fighting and counseling. It was the inevitable end. It revealed itself and had to be embodied. I stepped into what was already there. Still, there's no getting around the fact that it was hard. The hardest thing I've ever done. Makes sense that I would avoid doing something similar, though far lighter and less fraught with history (and children).
B was nice. Chivalrous, optimistic, kind. But at the end of the day, it was a cultural mismatch. We don't enjoy the same things. Our senses of humor are severely misaligned. He asked me if I'd ever heard of a cool movie called The Princess Bride. That he'd just seen. (I know that doesn't sound so bad - but having watched it gazillions of times, it seemed indicative of something.) He's never been in love. Does he know how to be? I think maybe he just decided to be and I was in his sights. He locked in. We'd had a conversation recently about heartbreak and lovesickness and he had no idea what I was referring to. Huh? How do you get to be 42 and not know what that is? He didn't really understand how I could be heartbroken over my divorce. He said: well, if you get divorced, I just figure there's a good reason. So it's all ok. No. It's not all ok. It sucks. There may be a million great reasons but IT IS NOT ALL OK. What kind of person would be ok with walking away from 16 years, 2 kids, shared hopes and dreams, a future, without what feels like unmanageable sadness? Not me.
He wasn't the guy. Clearly. I could enumerate the reasons but suffice it to say that he taught me there are kind men in the world who want to take care of women (I don't mean this in a 1950's way, rather in the sense that a person's heart is meant to be cared for). There are men who take a protective stance in a relationship. I like this. But it's not enough to overcome hearts and heads that don't connect. Strangely he felt we were connected, but as I've said, I'm not sure he knows what real connection feels like. When pressed on the heartbreak question, he recanted and said his heart had been broken in 1st grade. True heartbreak, he insisted. No. Sorry. Doesn't count.
I called him. Rather than have him drive all the way over to my place so I could stick a knife in his belly. He said: what do you want to do tomorrow? I said: I don't think we should see each other anymore. It feels too imbalanced. That can't lead anywhere good. I really like you but I'm not going to fall in love.
Silence. And then... "I don't know what to say, but I understand." Or something akin to that. Some chit chat - please stay in touch, lets take a break and let me know if you change your mind. And then goodbye.
And done. I felt awful. But relieved. And sort of empowered that I'd done something for me and hopefully protected him from greater heartbreak in the end. And I felt a sigh of relief to be alone in the world. Again. This made me appreciate single-hood. It's far better than a mismatch. There's peace in it. There are no awkward moments. Or hoping to get out of dates and evenings together so you can watch Louie CK.
Now I just need to get to seeing my ex this way. If I can only feel, really feel, that it is better to be alone, than with him, I will have made some actual progress.
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