Goodbye

It's so hard, to say goodbye to yesterday...

-Boyz II Men

As humans I think we generally like a certain level of normalcy. We want certain things known in our life at all times. The more we can control the better we tend to feel. I think a lot of those feelings carry over into our emotional lives. We want to have that comfort level with someone; that normally takes time to develop in an instant. It's great when you don't have to explain yourself to someone; you just are. And I don't mean that in the literal sense. When you first interact with someone you are fitting the pieces to form a relationship. There is some give and take. You have to develop a comfort level with someone in order to "get them". When you finally do; the relationship requires less work. Things just are. The boundaries have been set and the foundation is poured. This is what the relationship will be built on.

As you are separated from someone that relationship starts to unfold, but from the top down. The new/just figured out things change, but the core of the relationship is the last to go. The foundation is how your minds defined how the two of you will interact. All relationships have landmarks or events that will shape it until it ends. I feel that the closer it is to the beginning of the relationship the more likely a big event will influence the relationship.

I'm not sure if anyone else has, but I have been guilty of the on again off again relationship. Obviously, when you date someone for such a long period of time there are a lot of things you love about that person. If there isn't then why the hell are you dating so long in the first place? I've had three relationships that have spanned over two years in my life and emotionally I still care very much about these people. In fact, I want them all to end up very happy. For one reason or the other I/we know that our ideal happiness just doesn't involve each other romantically. That said I still love them like sisters and would always be there for them. This also is why my golden rule is to never talk bad about someone that I have dated. There is a certain trust that is exchanged and I honor that. Obviously, in some of these cases I was heartbroken and this feeling took time, but as I've grown older I have realized that it is all for the best.

My last long term relationship went through the latter half of college and things went great, but for purposes of public decency I won't vet out what went wrong. Either way there was drama involved and things ended. Now we didn't talk policy for about 9 months, and we had graduated, started new jobs, etc. Then slowly we started talking occasionally. This led to hanging out more, then kinda dating and then dating. Things were great at first and then it deteriorated. I was talking to an old college roommate and he asked me how things were and I relayed to him some relationship struggles. He laughed and told me that the same problems we were having now were the same things I had talked to him about almost three years ago. This took me aback. Ironically, he is in a similar situation and his problems were unchanged as well.

Now the only reason this surprised me is that I know that both of us have changed for the better. We are happier, wiser, and just overall more in tune with what we want out of life. We both care for eachother, and when we started out for the second time we both wanted things to work out. So why didn't things change? I spent all week thinking about it.

We have these landmarks that set the foundation for how our relationship will go and as time goes on some of the things on top wilt away, but we still have a foundation that was tainted. As the Bible says we were building our house on the sand. Our past failure was predictable of what would happen in the future. Regardless of how different we were today. Now I think that this could be overcome, but it takes A LOT of work and a lot of patience. In fact, so much so that I would say married couples only need undertake the task.

Question:

Has this happened to you? Did it work out?

PS I haven't posted in awhile because I was chest deep in work. Things are starting to slow down so expect more posts.