Breaking up is hard to do

Published: Monday, February 1, 1999

Monday, February 1, 1999

INDEPENDENCE: Sometimes being in a relationship

- even if it seems absolutely perfect -

just isn't what you want

He slams the door, and I am alone in the echo of his anger. I can't breathe because my head is under the covers, where I have been hiding in avoidance of yet another never-ending, solutionless debate. But no such luck. He found me. It's 2:30 a.m., and now I am so worked up that I can't sleep. I toss and turn trying to decide, for the umpteenth time if I have done the wrong thing or right thing - if I'm a fool or if he is. "What are you searching for?" he asked me moments ago. "I don't have an answer!" I hiss back.

I'm young, and he is crazy. The aggravation is not worth it; sometimes it tries to eat up the good memories that live in the past four years. The past four years of a relationship that started out as all relationships do: sweet and innocent, bought with poems and carnations (really!), books and genuine fascination with what might become of us. The memories of being in a very young love. Young passion. When every activity together was an adventure, when every day was a won challenge.

We were in high school. It was a huge deal just to hang out at his house for a few minutes after the last bell had rung. It brought me all the delight in the world. But now things are different. Do we have to grow apart when we grow up?

As I slid from high school to college with my hands full of boxes and photo albums and a healthy, fulfilling relationship, I never thought what I was doing was unusual, or that it took away from my youth. I knew many young couples in long relationships who had seeming bliss without the intermittent doubts that racked my conscience. I was taught to trust my heart, and I was satisfied. I knew I had a good thing. I knew I had a great guy.

But one day it hit me: I was 20 years old, living like I was 30. I had found the man of my dreams five-plus years too early. I had the perfect married life and I wasn't even finished growing. I got scared. I went nuts. I examined and reexamined my life until I made the decision to be set free.

After this realization, we broke up and got back together numerous times.

You might know this song and dance. The weeks when you are not together, but you're still together. Then the "friends with benefits" clause, which works until you realize you're more than friends. Then you don't even want to be friends. Then you don't want him to talk to your friends. Then you want his friends. And then it was final. I threw the whole idea of relationships out of my life.

And now we still have issues. He always asks for a list of his inadequacies, yet I have no details to provide, no answers. "Then why are these other guys better than me?" he asks, referring to any number of assorted guys I go out with for whatever reasons.

"They're not," I tell him, truthfully. "They're nothing." Not a good enough answer. "Then why start relationships with these boyfriends?" he continues.

"Damn it! I don't have any boyfriends!" Just a lot of boys. No relationships.

So why do I go out with randoms here and there? I don't know. Just to do it. Just for fun. Just to meet people and have new conversations and just for a little change of pace. Just to do everything I haven't done in the past four years.

And maybe when I am through, and when he's through, we can get back together.

It is rather comforting to think that this break we're taking is only a small hiatus and that we can get back together whenever we want. After all, we control our own destiny, right? We are active members in life - we call the shots. We are not victims.

So maybe in a few years. Maybe in a few months. I like to look at this in a hopeful way - optimistically - so I am not bothered by the possible finality of our self-proclaimed end. But when I toss optimism out the window and welcome reality - the glass is neither full nor empty; the glass just is - I lose a little faith.

Every day I change in ways I never did with him by my side. The smallest or largest things I do, even the way I think about life, mutates and expands in directions he can't even begin to see. As we move apart we lose track of our map, we forget the path that has the potential to ever bring us back together.

Is life full of relationship phases? We long for relationships in high school (when everybody else has one), we want to be free in college (when we have so many new prospects), we start getting serious in our mid-twenties (when friends get engaged), then we freak out a few years later when we realize it's our turn. Finally, our biological clock pushes us down the aisle for a life of (holy cow) matrimony! Are we humans so simple and predictable as this?

I guess a relationship is sometimes just what the love doctor ordered, while at other times it's like icing on the already sickly sweet cake.

I'm sure that a handful of people are satisfied, or claim to be satisfied, with their relationships. I really, truly think that's great. But I don't think they're the majority; just look at the divorce rate. Society expects all normal people to get married and live a monogamous life for ever and ever. I don't buy that. But that's another column.

None of this is about him. He was - and is, and always will be - an extraordinary person. But I am tired of having a boyfriend. Any boyfriend. Anyone who is not me. I want to be me by myself. I want to have to report to me and worry about me.

Undoubtedly, I will be misconstrued as being selfish or immature or this or that. I don't know. I don't think so. I do know, however, that I am happy now. I am happy without any limitations. Relationships do not always limit; they can open up a whole world of experiences previously unknown. A relationship can be something beautiful, it can make you grow and learn and feel things you never imagined.

Gradually, you ease into it, and become more comfortable. Your significant other becomes your favorite teddy bear: always there for you, with its favorite, familiar smell and predictably, perfect shape. You know about all of its rips and tears and have to be gentle with those parts. You feel like you can't live without that bear. But do you really want to have sex with your teddy bear?

I would never write a piece like this if I thought I was the only freak in the world who felt this way. I don't believe I am. I have friends upon friends who, for whatever reason, find their relationships less satisfactory than they once were.

I know quite a few folks who have just ended a long-term, big-deal romance. I know girls and guys, together and apart, who want to end things without really ending them. Been there, done that. The usual emotions abound: nostalgia about your past, curiosity about your future, lingering doubts about yourself.

I have no advice for those people in relationship limbo, lingering halfway between Together Forever City and Splitsville. I only know the way I have felt in the past, and the way I feel today. And there's a good chance I will completely change my mind tomorrow. But so what? We're all trying to do the best we can. Like I told him, "I don't have an answer."

Stephanie Pfeffer

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Breaking up is hard to do

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