September 8, 2023
I found this in my drafts. It's time to share it.
Yesterday, it became untenable to remain in communication with David. He was always generous about my spiritual leanings, but since I began seminary and have stepped up my spiritual practices, he’s not been kind. Our different views weren't an issue before — I’m thinking now he was being generous because we were a couple and he wanted things to stay even. But now that the stakes are low, he’s become downright cruel.
I can’t promise I’ll not take back up with the friendship in the future. He’s going through a lot right now. He realizes that sometimes it’s safe to lose patience with the people who love you, because it is very likely they will continue to love you. But he also must recognize he can’t count on that indefinitely.
June 7, 2023
Well, I said it would take some time and it has. I’m better. 19 days. It will have been three weeks on Friday.
Yesterday, the day of the move, I woke up at 6 and it was around 8 when I realized it was the first time I had thought about David. Normally, he would be about the first person I thought of when I woke. It was really nice to realize he’s no longer front and center in my mind.
And then today, unpacking throughout the day, then hiding away in my room from mom because she’s on OCD overdrive… When I think of David, there’s not that sense of connectedness anymore. When I think of him, I don’t think of him as my boyfriend, my person, the person closest to me in the world. Because he’s just not. A few days ago, when I started to experience that shift, it made me sad. But today I am less sad. There is a sense of calm, a sense that things are how they should be. I keep thinking of what I said about how I know how to do single because I’ve done it all my life. And I really do know how to do single with dignity and grace. This is my natural state. This is not what I expected, but it is what I have and it is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is still not all of what I want for myself. I very much would like to experience being part of a couple. But it has to be the right person, the right circumstances, the right time. I know for a fact, because I have proven it to myself, I will not compromise. I have proven I will not override my instincts, and when something doesn’t feel right, I no longer spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to tell myself everything is OK. I no longer go along with it when I know better. That is simply not good enough, and it will never work for me again. It has never worked long term, but I spend less and less time lying to myself these days. I end things much sooner. Do I love David? Absolutely. But I also know that love is not enough to make a successful relationship. And in fact, when you love someone, and especially when you love yourself, you can be realistic about what will work long term and what will not. So far, I have not found what will work. Do I love David? Absolutely. Will we ever be successful romantically long-term? Not from this vantage point. It would be nice. But I don’t see it happening. And yet, what I have with him is priceless. That is because in this relationship, I did it right. Then again, I always do it right now.
Always my focus is on friendship first. It is the only way I build relationships.
Lovers come and go but friends stay.
“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person — without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.” - Osho, “The Power of Love”
Photo by Emily Wade on Unsplash