Monday, February 1, 1999
Breaking up is hard to do
INDEPENDENCE: Sometimes being in a relationship
– even if it seems absolutely perfect –
just isn’t what you want
He slams the door, and I am alone in the echo of his anger. I
can’t breathe because my head is under the covers, where I have
been hiding in avoidance of yet another never-ending, solutionless
debate. But no such luck. He found me. It’s 2:30 a.m., and now I am
so worked up that I can’t sleep. I toss and turn trying to decide,
for the umpteenth time if I have done the wrong thing or right
thing – if I’m a fool or if he is. "What are you searching for?" he
asked me moments ago. "I don’t have an answer!" I hiss back.
I’m young, and he is crazy. The aggravation is not worth it;
sometimes it tries to eat up the good memories that live in the
past four years. The past four years of a relationship that started
out as all relationships do: sweet and innocent, bought with poems
and carnations (really!), books and genuine fascination with what
might become of us. The memories of being in a very young love.
Young passion. When every activity together was an adventure, when
every day was a won challenge.
We were in high school. It was a huge deal just to hang out at
his house for a few minutes after the last bell had rung. It
brought me all the delight in the world. But now things are
different. Do we have to grow apart when we grow up?
As I slid from high school to college with my hands full of
boxes and photo albums and a healthy, fulfilling relationship, I
never thought what I was doing was unusual, or that it took away
from my youth. I knew many young couples in long relationships who
had seeming bliss without the intermittent doubts that racked my
conscience. I was taught to trust my heart, and I was satisfied. I
knew I had a good thing. I knew I had a great guy.
But one day it hit me: I was 20 years old, living like I was 30.
I had found the man of my dreams five-plus years too early. I had
the perfect married life and I wasn’t even finished growing. I got
scared. I went nuts. I examined and reexamined my life until I made
the decision to be set free.
After this realization, we broke up and got back together
numerous times.
You might know this song and dance. The weeks when you are not
together, but you’re still together. Then the "friends with
benefits" clause, which works until you realize you’re more than
friends. Then you don’t even want to be friends. Then you don’t
want him to talk to your friends. Then you want his friends. And
then it was final. I threw the whole idea of relationships out of
my life.
And now we still have issues. He always asks for a list of his
inadequacies, yet I have no details to provide, no answers. "Then
why are these other guys better than me?" he asks, referring to any
number of assorted guys I go out with for whatever reasons.
"They’re not," I tell him, truthfully. "They’re nothing." Not a
good enough answer. "Then why start relationships with these
boyfriends?" he continues.
"Damn it! I don’t have any boyfriends!" Just a lot of boys. No
relationships.
So why do I go out with randoms here and there? I don’t know.
Just to do it. Just for fun. Just to meet people and have new
conversations and just for a little change of pace. Just to do
everything I haven’t done in the past four years.
And maybe when I am through, and when he’s through, we can get
back together.
It is rather comforting to think that this break we’re taking is
only a small hiatus and that we can get back together whenever we
want. After all, we control our own destiny, right? We are active
members in life – we call the shots. We are not victims.
So maybe in a few years. Maybe in a few months. I like to look
at this in a hopeful way – optimistically – so I am not bothered by
the possible finality of our self-proclaimed end. But when I toss
optimism out the window and welcome reality – the glass is neither
full nor empty; the glass just is – I lose a little faith.
Every day I change in ways I never did with him by my side. The
smallest or largest things I do, even the way I think about life,
mutates and expands in directions he can’t even begin to see. As we
move apart we lose track of our map, we forget the path that has
the potential to ever bring us back together.
Is life full of relationship phases? We long for relationships
in high school (when everybody else has one), we want to be free in
college (when we have so many new prospects), we start getting
serious in our mid-twenties (when friends get engaged), then we
freak out a few years later when we realize it’s our turn. Finally,
our biological clock pushes us down the aisle for a life of (holy
cow) matrimony! Are we humans so simple and predictable as
this?
I guess a relationship is sometimes just what the love doctor
ordered, while at other times it’s like icing on the already sickly
sweet cake.
I’m sure that a handful of people are satisfied, or claim to be
satisfied, with their relationships. I really, truly think that’s
great. But I don’t think they’re the majority; just look at the
divorce rate. Society expects all normal people to get married and
live a monogamous life for ever and ever. I don’t buy that. But
that’s another column.
None of this is about him. He was – and is, and always will be –
an extraordinary person. But I am tired of having a boyfriend. Any
boyfriend. Anyone who is not me. I want to be me by myself. I want
to have to report to me and worry about me.
Undoubtedly, I will be misconstrued as being selfish or immature
or this or that. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I do know,
however, that I am happy now. I am happy without any limitations.
Relationships do not always limit; they can open up a whole world
of experiences previously unknown. A relationship can be something
beautiful, it can make you grow and learn and feel things you never
imagined.
Gradually, you ease into it, and become more comfortable. Your
significant other becomes your favorite teddy bear: always there
for you, with its favorite, familiar smell and predictably, perfect
shape. You know about all of its rips and tears and have to be
gentle with those parts. You feel like you can’t live without that
bear. But do you really want to have sex with your teddy bear?
I would never write a piece like this if I thought I was the
only freak in the world who felt this way. I don’t believe I am. I
have friends upon friends who, for whatever reason, find their
relationships less satisfactory than they once were.
I know quite a few folks who have just ended a long-term,
big-deal romance. I know girls and guys, together and apart, who
want to end things without really ending them. Been there, done
that. The usual emotions abound: nostalgia about your past,
curiosity about your future, lingering doubts about yourself.
I have no advice for those people in relationship limbo,
lingering halfway between Together Forever City and Splitsville. I
only know the way I have felt in the past, and the way I feel
today. And there’s a good chance I will completely change my mind
tomorrow. But so what? We’re all trying to do the best we can. Like
I told him, "I don’t have an answer."
Stephanie Pfeffer
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