The Relationship that was never there...
He’s the guy who is always in the back of my mind. Always with the what could have, should have, or would have been. He was the one I was suppose to marry, the one who was going to get me through my life, the one who was a part of the plan. It ended six years ago so why is he still there? He’s married, has children, and lives in a state very far away so why is he still there? Perhaps a look at the relationship might hint at why I should just let go.
This relationship started in June and sort of overlapped another relationship of mine. I met him when he started working at McDonalds and since I was a total flirt it kind of took off from there. It was the summer in-between graduating from high school and starting college and I was leaving in the fall for Minnesota. I wasn’t really looking to start a relationship with anyone but he was there and he was cute and he flirted with me too. We started hanging out a couple of times a week outside of work and started to form a connection. I kind of told him in an off-hand way that I was sort of seeing someone else and that I had to end it with him first before this went any further. The relationship I had to end was with a guy I had dated on and off for two years. He was my first love and there are a lot of things that go along with that distinction. The thing that made it a little easier was that he lived in Colorado and I still lived in Michigan. Our relationship was a pretty weird one. We basically "beat our relationship into the ground" and finally had an arrangement that when we were together we were together and when we were apart we were apart. The amazing thing about this relationship was that somewhere along the way we formed a pretty strong friendship and when the relationship ended the friendship didn’t. I do remember an incident that happened during this transition in which I was on the phone with B while D was in the room with my mom, as I walked out of the room to take B’s phone call, I told him that D was a friend of mine. The was D and I’s first fight, he was not too pleased that he was dating me and I was calling him a friend.
On the other hand, D had just gotten out of a very serious relationship as well. We were both pretty reluctant at first to move it very quickly because we were both transitioning from other people to each other. But, there was definitely a connection there that we just couldn’t ignore. The little things we did for each other at first seemed so important, I would help him with his laundry and buy his favorite cereal for him and he would change the oil in my car and bring me flowers he picked when I was at work and he wasn’t. Though we were trying to go slow we talked to each other every day and saw each other almost everyday. That summer was good, it was really good, it was the best part of our relationship. I soon left for college though and we decided to turn our relationship into a long distance one. He came with my family and I to move me into my dorm and apparently had a fantastic conversation with my mom on the way back to Michigan. It’s a really hard thing though to be a college freshman, the first time out on your own without parental supervision and still being tied down.
Meanwhile, the relationship was hitting rocky grounds. I had a friend from Michigan come to visit me and I made him stay in a hotel and ignored him while I was on a six hour phone conversation with D. I saw him for a grand total of two hours while he was there for an entire weekend. Meanwhile, D had a friend from Wisconsin in town, she stayed at his apartment and I didn’t hear from him until she left. I went home for Thanksgiving and wanted to see him but he said he was going home. Turns out he was in Houghton the entire time I was. I write this now and think how could I ever be so stupid to stay in the middle of this. At the time though, he said everything right, and he was a part of my plan. I was going to graduate in three years, get married to him before I enrolled in law school, go to law school, and become a very successful attorney in a high paying law firm. I couldn’t deter from the plan so, I gave more to make up for what was slowly disappearing. He graduated in December and I went home for his graduation. It was also the first time we had sex, it was actually the first time I had sex with anyone. I was scared but that first taste was amazing. I wanted him to look for jobs in Minneapolis so we could be together but he decided that the best place for him was anywhere but Minneapolis. As it turns out though, he had failed a class and actually was not graduating yet. He became closer with my family in Houghton as he stayed through that spring. They provided a structure for him when he was missing his own family. The relationship was still good. We talked often, I went home to visit him for winter carnival/his birthday/Valentine’s day and we spent a really good weekend together just pretending that we were living together.
I was going to London in May for a three week Shakespeare course. Before I left though I went to Houghton to see D and he took me to his home town to show me where he lived and to meet more of his family. It was a nice visit but I definitely got the feeling that his mother wasn’t all that into me, partly because we informed her that I couldn’t cook, and that I had ambitions to be something other than a housewife. The cooking thing was never true, I don’t know why I constantly told him I couldn’t cook but I was so desperate not to be a housewife that I kept it a closely guarded secret. I got from London and was flat broke. He sent me some money to keep me afloat but made a pretty big deal about lending it to me. It was hours and hours worth of conversation. By the time I got back from London he was living in Texas for his job. I couldn’t understand why he never moved to Minneapolis but he just didn’t want to be in the mid-west. He started hanging out with some real characters in Texas, bring home strippers and hanging out all hours at bars and clubs (he was a recovering alcoholic). He came to Minneapolis around my birthday for a conference and I saw him one night out of the three that he was there.
He really never had trouble meeting or making friends with people. I still think we both get that trait from growing up in military families. It’s almost impossible not to have the type of personality that makes you friendly when you move so much. It allows you to connect with people and have the ability to read them. It was around this time that he started hanging out with J and a group of friends that enjoyed the outdoors and camping like he did. J would come up in conversation a lot between about August and around the time we broke up. The relationship was pretty strained at this point with me pissed off that he wouldn’t move to Minneapolis and him trying to establish a life in Texas. Still though, he was a part of the plan, so we had to be together, if for nothing else than the sake of the plan. Our last ditch effort was over Thanksgiving when he came up to come to South Dakota to meet my extended family. We fought on the way to South Dakota, we fought when we were in South Dakota, and the only thing that was really good about the entire weekend was the sex. We still stayed together, I just couldn’t let go. We had to be together, we had to make this work, he was the one, he was everything, he was an important part of the plan.
He never invited me to Texas, he let me know more than once that I wouldn’t like it down there and that I shouldn’t bother coming. Were bells and whistles going off at this point? Nope (the plan, remember...). We got into another fight over Christmas regarding my Christmas present. I guessed that I was getting a watch and he was kind of ticked off that I guessed correctly. The card that was sent with the gift was sweet, hopeful, loving, and it allayed all my fears. A little less than a month later, he broke up with me.
I still to this day remember that day so very clearly. It was night, and he was at a fair or something in Texas with J and her family. He said that he couldn’t do this anymore and that it was getting too hard to make it work. I don’t remember if I cried when I was on the phone with him (I more than likely did). I sat in my room for 3 hours crying and praying to God that he would kill me because I couldn’t handle the amount of pain I was in. My roommates were watching the Golden Globes and I remember coming out of my room, telling them, and laying in Katie’s lap for hours just crying. There was a lot of pain, a lot of crying, and a lot of praying.
We talked about two months later and he gave me that false hope that every girl needs, and those of us that are naive hold on to. He said that someday we would be together again, that this was temporary and that I was an important part of his life. I would call and randomly e-mail him over the next couple of years. I always hoped that we would be together again. I held on to that like a dim candle to get me through a very dark cave. I never dated anyone else and never had sex with anyone else. My light went out when he informed me over e-mail one day that I needed to quit bugging him and that he didn’t want me to be in his life anymore. It was like a slap to the face and I later learned this was around the time that he was getting married, to J.
The plan was over, it was broken, fractured and no longer recognizable. I still held on to this hope though. He was always in the back of my head, always in my heart, the one on the pedestal that everyone was measured against. It’s been six years and he still come to my mind everyone once and awhile. I don’t want it anymore though. Clearly it wasn’t the healthiest or greatest relationship that I’ve ever been in but, there he was an image transposed on everyone I went on a date with, everyone I slept with, and everyone I tried to have a relationship with. I gave him an incredible amount of power over my life and I’m done. I was the best thing in that relationship, not him, and I don’t need a plan in order to run my life. I have friends who love me, a family that supports me, and jobs that I’m pretty damn good at. This is me, with out him, and I don’t need him to be happy. I am happy. I know who I am, I know what I can do, and I know that there is someone out there that will treat me better, love me deeper, and appreciate me for who I am not what I can or can’t do. I’m ready to be free, I’m blowing out the candle because I see a different light in the dark and it’s mine.
