Breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes it's worth it

How do you make love stop? I’m asking because I'm fifty years old, and I still don’t know the answer.

I don’t know if I’m broken, crazy, or just different, but I can’t seem to stop loving someone, even if I don’t like them anymore. Some people can gradually watch their love fade away to nothing and some can turn it on and off like a light switch. That’s not me. When I love someone, I love them forever.

And yes, this is about my breakup a few weeks ago. (If you want to go back and read about it, please do.)

While I’m not feeling the intense pain I did initially, I have noticed moments of great sadness washing over me. Sadness because I’m never going to see him again. Ever. What could have been will never be. It’s too late now, and that makes me sad.

It makes me sad because I’m pretty sure I loved him. I think. Or maybe not. But maybe almost?

The thing is that I know it’s too late. In my mind, I know that. Heck, even in my heart, I know that. But my heart doesn’t want it to be too late. My heart is having a hard time letting go of the life I wanted us to have together. I thought we were going to be living together this fall. We had plans.

I thought we had plans.

Well, I had plans. I really wanted this to work. I wanted it a lot. Too much.

Looking back, I can see a million tiny red flags that I chose to ignore or to reason away.

To be honest, if I had seen a woman making the same decisions I did, I would have told her she needed to drop the guy. And maybe get some therapy. I would have told her that after the first time they dated and then broke up.

But after the fourth or fifth time? I would have insisted she try therapy and maybe stay clear of dating for a while. In case you missed that point, I dated Simon more than once. Too many times. Five too many. We met six years ago. We’ve dated on and off since then. If I had to count, I would say that I’ve broken up with him at least five times and he’s broken up with me once.

Seriously, what to Hell was I thinking?

Was I a sucker for punishment? Was I stupid? Was I desperate for love? Was I afraid to be alone? Or was it simply the incredibly amazing sex that drew me in once again? (Side note: I almost left that last sentence out. I didn’t. You see, I’m not sure where the line between being honest and open turns into being too honest and too open, but it’s quite possible that I passed it six blogs ago! So, what to heck, may as well let it all hang out.)

So why did I get back together with him this time? Maybe all of the above. And maybe because I wanted to know. I was curious what would happen. Either way, I’d win. If it worked out, yay for me! If it didn’t work out, at least this time I’d know that I'd done everything I could on my end to make it work. (This would mean I could let myself not feel guilty for closing the door forever.) Also, I knew that whatever the outcome, I would learn valuable lessons. I knew this because I’d be consciously watching for them.

Take note, there was a roughly two-year gap between the last time we’d dated and this time. It seems unimportant, but it’s not. You see, I was doing a lot of work on myself during that time. I had grown and I had changed a lot. The questions was, had he? And if you’d asked me early last summer if I would ever date him again, I would have said, “Hell no.”

So, what changed?

By the second week of July, I was being hit with a considerable amount of stress, all coming in from separate fronts. I was dealing with a brain injury, my stepfather died, I found myself moving in with my mother for the first time since I was 12 years old, and I had this gut-wrenching feeling of being purposeless, and therefore worthless, because I couldn’t do my job. Without my job, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I’m not even sure that I felt like I existed. I was nothing. Just a body, breathing and taking up space.

My point is that I was not in a good headspace. Heck I was in a rough spot mentally, emotionally, and physically. That’s why I started seeing my therapist again. It helped, but it wasn’t enough, not in the beginning, not for the amount of emotional upheaval I was experiencing. I felt alone and I was afraid of what life might bring next. (We’d just been hit by the pandemic a few months before, so it was still a huge and scary unknown. For all I knew, it could have been the beginning of Armageddon. Maybe not. But really, who knew?)

By late September, I was so far down the rabbit hole that I couldn’t see any light at all. I was grasping for something to hold onto. Without my job, I had endless hours to just sit and think and feel. And at some point, during the storm, I started to feel like I needed a life partner. I didn’t want to be alone, to face life alone, not anymore. (The intensity of the need should have alerted me to the fact that an unhealthy coping mechanism had popped up and taken residency in my mind. But it didn’t.)

Enter Simon. (That’s not his real name, by the way.) We hadn’t spoken in almost two years and then one morning I woke up to find a text from him. “Happy Canada Day.” That’s it, that’s the message he sent to me. Happy Canada Day.

WTF? Seriously, what to fuck? No. Not gonna happen.

I looked at the message, shook my head, laughed out loud, and then I deleted it.

But it was too late. It was in my mind, the seed of an idea, ready and waiting to pop up and wreak havoc at the first sign of trouble.

And, as I just said, trouble came. It came in the form of stress. The stress of my brain not working right, of the pandemic taking hold, of my stepfather dying, of me moving in with my mother, and so on. The idea of Simon started to pop up here and there. I’d ignore it. But Bop! It’s right back up there screaming Call Simon, Call Simon. But I didn’t. I’d fight it. I’d push the thought right back down.

Until one day when I didn’t push it down.

I reached out to him, and we arranged to meet.

We had a great time together. He asked if we could see each other again. I felt good for the first time in a long time. We started texting again, and then we started spending more time together, which I enjoyed. I knew I was playing with fire, and I knew things could end the same way as before...

But they might not.

I guess I wanted to see what would happen this time, especially if I tried to fight my tendency toward mistrust and suspicion. I could try to be open, trusting, and clear about who I am, what I want, and how I feel. So, I did. I was patient. I was kind. I was loving. I was wide open. I was still wide open when we crashed and burned.

I did get hurt again, but I also learned some stuff in the process.

I have anxious attachment tendencies – textbook ones. (Look it up, it’s worth learning about if you’re in relationship now or if you ever want to be in a relationship.)

My negative coping mechanisms kick in when I’m under an extreme amount of stress. It’s extra important that I’m using healthy coping skills on a daily basis during these time periods so I can be proactive instead of reactive.

I have a tendency toward choosing relationships I know will end. I have a tendency toward choosing partners who won’t or can’t show the proper amount of love and respect. I have a tendency to repeat this same pattern again and again and again. What I don’t know is whether I do this because I want to somehow change the ending or because I simply think I deserve to be tortured. I’m thinking that it’s a little bit of both. My plan is to do whatever I need to do to heal my broken parts and to eliminate this toxic pattern once and for all.

I’m addicted to Simon. I know I love him, too, but I think the better part of what I feel is actually addictive in nature. Addiction, it’s always an issue and it’s always ready to creep up where you least expect it to. For the record, I don’t drink. I quit when I turned nineteen. I’ve tried here and there since then, but no. Not for me. And I don’t do drugs. (Except sugar, caffeine… you know, the legal stuff.) When you’re someone with addictive tendencies, you really need to be on high alert to catch those signs that show something is changing from a pleasure to an addiction. I need to be ready to stop an addiction before it takes root.

And this brings me around to codependency. My goal in a relationship is to be interdependent, but I have a programmed tendency toward codependency. If I’m not on high alert for signs of its appearance, it will creep in slowly until I’m fully submerged in a big ocean of crazy, created solely by yours truly.

And this naturally leads me to the issue of losing myself in a relationship. On my own, I’m independent, resourceful, and I don’t need validation from anyone else. In a relationship, it’s the total opposite. It’s as though I surrender who I am so that I can become who I think my partner might want me to be. I think I do it in a desperate attempt to not lose them, but it invariably has the opposite effect to the one I want. I sacrifice my own desires for theirs. I sacrifice my own needs for theirs. I sacrifice my whole self by making them the most important person in my world instead of me. I become someone other than who I was when they initially fell in love with me. This inevitably leads to the dissolution of the relationship and me being left with a version of myself I don’t recognize.

I have a lot of programming that needs to be identified and undone. I was programmed to put the needs of others first. I was programmed to think my emotions were wrong, that I was wrong. I was programmed to believe other people had the answers to who I was, how I felt, what I should do, and who I should be. I was taught to mistrust my instincts, to deny my feelings, to question my goodness. I was taught to be accommodating toward others – all others, but most especially to men – I learned to help them at my own expense. This is my programming. This is years of conditioning that I need to scrutinize, question, and, ultimately, chuck out.

And, clearly, I have a fair bit of crazy still locked up inside my head. The good news? The crazy is no longer buried too deep to locate. It’s bubbling up to the surface, and it’s ready to be mined for lessons, ones that will hopefully lead to change.

I guess you could say that I learned a lot from my relationship with Simon. I learned a lot about myself, a lot about what I want from a relationship, and a lot about who I want to be as part of a couple. But most importantly, I learned that I don’t want to be anyone other than who I am.

As for making love stop? I don't think I can. Part of me will always love part of him, and that's okay. He's a fellow soul on the journey of life, just mucking along trying to figure things out in his own way.

That's okay. I am too. We all are.