Oasis

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So, me and J broke up.

Most of my friends (online and offline) and family have reacted with surprise, and for good reason: this all seems very sudden, but in fact it has been a slow build-up that started from the moment we got together.

I had my doubts. As did J, but about slightly different things. I was graduating in June, and the likelihood of any relationship lasting beyond that, via long distance, was low. The relationship would have to be pretty fucking solid. I didn’t really expect to suddenly find someone like that during the last few months of my college career, so I wasn’t planning for the long-term. Any relationship I was going to have would automatically have an expiration date, unless something drastic happened to change my mind.

Concerning J specifically, our relationship had its own issues. I wasn’t passionately in love with him, and we had a few glaring incompatibilities (and some glaring similarities) that would probably cause dissatisfaction in the future, and we were both going to be unsettled for the next few years. Despite all that, he made me happy, and I grew to like him so much that I really, really wanted things to work.

We had numerous conversations about these things, but ended up deciding to wait until June to decide whether or not to stay together beyond that. We probably weren’t going to, but thought that spending a few months together would be enjoyable and good for the both of us.

He’d asked me to move in with him in a moment of impulse and passion, and I said yes. Ironically, after I moved in, it became apparent that things weren’t playing out how I hoped they would. We ended up treating each other more like good friends than a couple, and he told me he’d come to feel as much towards me. He told me that part of the problem too was that he hadn’t fallen in love with me, and didn’t think he would. And to make things even more complicated, two of his exes are still on campus, with whom he still has somewhat confusing relationships. He’d tell me how pressured and troubled he was by his relationships with them, and I’d want very much to be supportive, but would feel too jealous and angry. I distinctly felt like I had already lost him as a significant other. Because he didn’t “want” me and because his romantic feelings weren’t focused on me, I felt like everything was already over. I was lonely. I came home once or twice and just lay in bed and cried for hours.

And yet we were still dating.

We finally broke up when I told him how upset I felt by feeling as if I’d lost him but not being able to deal with it because we were still “together.”

So now I guess we’re good friends who also live together, are emotionally/physically intimate, and have sex. We’ve agreed that if one of us hooks up with or goes on a date with somebody else, we’ll let the other know.

Personally, I think us living together is working out fine. Things might be difficult once one of us gets together with somebody else. It’s not like one of us will get into another serious relationship, but something casual is definitely a possibility. I’m interested in a couple people, but I don’t know if I even want to bother trying to initiate anything with them. The most I can hope for is casual sex, and right now that sounds pretty pointless.

On the plus side, we’re still there for each other. And now that I’m not dating him, I feel less ire at his exes. I’m starting to feel nonchalant when he talks about them. Or sympathy towards him. I hope he works things out with them, because it’s obvious that there are still some feelings there.

If nothing awful happens, we’ll stay good friends after we both leave here, since we both still like & care about each other a lot. I’m glad that I got to know J, and I’m glad I’ve gained his friendship, though I lost him as a partner.

In the end, I came to see our relationship as an oasis. Both of us had had many hurtful past experiences, but we then we met each other, and we were good to each other. I can’t speak for him, but my time with him healed me.

“There is a storm in the distance / The wind breathing warning of its imminence / There is a lighthouse five hundred yards down / You and I will be safe there / Love, you are foolish, you’re tired / Your sleeplessness makes you a liar / The city is burning / The ocean is turning / Our only chance is the lighthouse” - Lighthouse by The Hush Sound

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