Written on Thursday.
What happens when a relationship stops growing? What happens when you can see no romantic future?
I name him Lover here because I love him. Because the romantic notion of extramarital affair, without all the lying and deception those words usually imply, seemed to fit our relationship. We love each other. We find time to be together, for play and for sex. We have dinner and go to movies. But we do not live together, we are not creating a family or a future together. Yes, we are creating our own futures. Yes, we help each other create those futures. But our futures are not intertwined with each other.
I have always felt an inequality of emotional attachment in our relationship. It has always bothered me on some level, but Lover has always said that it does not bother him. He accepts what I can offer him and is grateful for whatever that might be. He has accepted any and all changes to our relationship that I have brought to him. I almost said graciously there, but it hasn’t always been gracious or clean, but he has accepted them. Because he wants me to be happy and he wants me to have whatever I want to have, wherever I want to have it.
He and I have been “together” for over two years now. We started playing in July of 2008. When we starting dating, or having a relationship is a bit more fuzzy than that because of the confusion on my part. It happened, I say, some time in Spring of 2009 when I started having Sunday nights with him, though others say it started much sooner than that.
My life is in a state of turmoil and self examination right now. This week, my focus turned to my relationship with Lover. It started with a disagreement and some upset, and spiraled into a lot of upset and consideration of the relationship as a whole. None of the upset is relationship ending. We communicate better than that, when we put our hearts and minds to it. And this week, we did. I feel like we talked through all the upset and the trouble. But that does not negate my wondering if I’m peeling the nipple tape off slowly instead of ripping it off.
Lover asked me today, what if the next two years went like the last two? I responded that our first year was full of exploration and growth and excitement and that this past year, it has been moving backwards. That has been my doing, I accept that responsibility. I took things away from our relationship, imposed limits that were not there the first year. So, if I look forward, I see things continuing on that trend, our romantic relationship becoming less and less over time. If that’s what I see, then is it fair to keep dragging us both forward? I don’t think it is.
He is a wonderful friend and I have no intention of giving that up. But I do think it is time for me to step away romantically. He asked me this morning if I wanted to take a six month break. I think putting a time frame around something like that is silly. I think if we break up and two months down the line we decide it was a mistake, saying oh no, we have to wait six months is silly. I think if we break up and it works really well, having that six month time of, oh, we have to revisit it at such a date is equally silly.
And now I wait, and do not post this, because he and I have not finished our discussion. I left him this morning, saying I do not know what I want, and I need time to think about it. Now that I have thought about it, I need to return to him to finish the discussion. Then I will decide if this gets posted or not.
We completed our discussion. She dumped me. 🙂
She wondered about the wisdom in sharing such intimate details in a blog – but we both agreed that this is what this blog is for.
I agree with everything she wrote.
There was a time where I wanted every sexually intimate relationship to be firmly rooted in romance, with plans to live it out indefinitely, growing closer with the passage of time. I’ve since come to see that not all relationships will take that path. I’m open to that path, inviting it, but I no longer require it.
I love her. It’s out of that love that I honor where her romantic love leads her. I want her to have what she wants to have for herself.
Our immediate future together looks “project oriented.” I like that! Will I miss having spaces in our calendars to take our affection to the extremes with which we have become accustomed for the past two years? You bet.