Incoherent Scribblings

How long does an average long-term relationship last nowadays? Three years, five years, ten years, more? Why do they fail? Why do they succeed? Questions we have searched for answers to for millennia. Questions that still really have no answer.

Ten years ago this month, I moved in with my ex. The plan was that I would stay with him over the summer so I could continue working at my college library and then in the fall, I would move back to campus and finish my undergraduate degree.

Of course it didn’t work out that way. We had fun “playing house” and at the end of the summer he convinced me not to move back to campus, but to stay with him. I continued going to school, but started commuting thirty miles back and forth to campus everyday because I was so blissfully happy and thought that I had it made. And for about six months we lived in paradise; then all hell broke loose.

Up to that point in my life, I had never been in a relationship like the one that I had with my ex. He was the “bad” boy with long hair and tattoos that I had always been looking for. He was seven years my senior and had a world of experience that I didn’t. He showed me things I never would have discovered on my own; some wonderful, some dangerous. Our relationship was based on passion, and when it was good, it was very good. When it was bad, it was awful.

And I loved him: Really in truly loved him. Unfortunately, that was the problem. All during the downward spiral when I did things he would never forget and he said things that I could never forgive, I loved him. I loved him so much that I ached, but during the last years of our on-again-off-again relationship where we more-or-less lived together, I began to really intensely dislike him.

During one of our longer “off-again” periods, I got accepted to graduate school and moved 700 miles away. I had originally thought if I put distance between us things would cool and eventually end. But he had such a hold on me that when he asked me to forgive him for the thousandth time and told that he loved me and I looked into his blue-gray eyes, I believed him again. He didn’t try to stand in the way of my going to graduate school and so we tried to keep our relationship alive during my time away.

The distance gave me a clarity that I never would have had otherwise. I still loved him, but not nearly as passionately as before and I began to see him with new eyes. Eventually I came to crossroads. One day I said to myself that enough was enough. I decided that for my sanity I had to either cut off all contact with him or marry him. When I realized that I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying him, I suddenly comprehended that though I may have still loved him, there was no future for us.

The final time we broke up had to be one of the hardest things I ever did. Though he didn’t want to believe me, I knew that it was finally completely over. I stopped taking his calls and when I got a job and moved away I didn’t give him my address. It hurt. It hurt bad. But it hurt a little less every day for the next two and half years until I barely noticed it anymore.

Finally, I got lucky and found A. I got the chance to start over again and vowed I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that ruined my relationship with my ex. I have been true to my word, and after almost four years, not only do I still love A., I still really like him too!

Posted on Saturday 21 May 2005 at 20:29 under memory lane, that's life!.
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