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Two days ago, I broke up with my partner of fifteen years.
It's been the most difficult and painful decision I've ever had to make in my life. There wasn't any cheating, nor any abuse. There were hardly even a lot of arguments. What it came down to, in the end, was that the person I was when I fell in love with a long-haired musician at 17 years old isn't the person I am now. The things I looked for in my first crush are not the things I want in the person with whom I'm going to be raising a child and growing old.
I still love him, and he still loves me. And yet sometimes love just isn't enough. Realizing that has been a long, hard, awful struggle. I've cried more in the last three months than I have in my entire life before that. I've never felt more guilty than I did in the moment I walked out the door, knowing how badly he wanted me to stay.
Sometimes it still doesn't feel real. I thought I was going to grow old with this man. I'm 32 years old. I've only ever kissed one other person in my life, and I was 16 back then. I've never dated as an adult. I've never even kissed a woman. I'm pretty sure I'm done dating men, though, so at 32 years I find myself in the awkward position of feeling like a virgin again. I had a plan for my life, and suddenly all of it is gone. We renovated a house together, so the financial fall-out of that is going to be a nightmare. I love his nieces like they're my own, and I want to stay in their lives. His sister has become a sister to me.
It's a financial mess. It's an emotional mess. I know it was the right decision to make, and yet it's hard to believe that anything that hurts this badly can ever be the right thing to do.
And yet, for the first time in months, I can look into the future without feeling like there's an awful weight on my shoulders dragging me down.
This entry was also posted at https://neery.dreamwidth.org/143184.html. There are currently
DW comments.
It's been the most difficult and painful decision I've ever had to make in my life. There wasn't any cheating, nor any abuse. There were hardly even a lot of arguments. What it came down to, in the end, was that the person I was when I fell in love with a long-haired musician at 17 years old isn't the person I am now. The things I looked for in my first crush are not the things I want in the person with whom I'm going to be raising a child and growing old.
I still love him, and he still loves me. And yet sometimes love just isn't enough. Realizing that has been a long, hard, awful struggle. I've cried more in the last three months than I have in my entire life before that. I've never felt more guilty than I did in the moment I walked out the door, knowing how badly he wanted me to stay.
Sometimes it still doesn't feel real. I thought I was going to grow old with this man. I'm 32 years old. I've only ever kissed one other person in my life, and I was 16 back then. I've never dated as an adult. I've never even kissed a woman. I'm pretty sure I'm done dating men, though, so at 32 years I find myself in the awkward position of feeling like a virgin again. I had a plan for my life, and suddenly all of it is gone. We renovated a house together, so the financial fall-out of that is going to be a nightmare. I love his nieces like they're my own, and I want to stay in their lives. His sister has become a sister to me.
It's a financial mess. It's an emotional mess. I know it was the right decision to make, and yet it's hard to believe that anything that hurts this badly can ever be the right thing to do.
And yet, for the first time in months, I can look into the future without feeling like there's an awful weight on my shoulders dragging me down.
This entry was also posted at https://neery.dreamwidth.org/143184.html. There are currently
DW comments.