If you look at the romantic chaos of my life over the past two and a half years, you can draw a straight line through the madness from me to LP.
Dating him changed my life’s trajectory, and not necessarily for the better.
We fell deeply for each other, without realizing a relationship would be impossible. People often ask me what went wrong and my answer is often a blithe: “when you’re 90% identical, that last 10% is a killer.”
That’s a facile answer, and not entirely accurate. He also has a child around whom his life revolves, a challenging career around which the rest of his life revolves, and a horrible ex who is still active in his life thanks to the relationship with his child.
The combination of those things, and our mutual craziness meant we were always doomed.
We have never really lost contact and we connected over facebook in December. He is keeping up with my life, and I am keeping up with his. He has been more involved, reaching out more often, and it’s been heartening.
In the old days, I dated men who were never a threat to my heart because really, it was just him.
He was my heart.
Amusingly, we have never stopped seeing each other. We were never exclusive, but we also never broke up. It is not unusual for me to hear from him on holidays or for us to engage in sexual banter. He still fantasizes about me, and wishes things could be different.
For me, they could be. He could simply choose to be with me. Choose to integrate me back into his daily life. Choose to make time for us to see one another regularly.
I could rework my life to be with him. We could cut each other slack, understanding the other makes mistakes in communication, and pledging ourselves to work through it. It wouldn’t be that hard. It really wouldn’t.