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astillarJane and I are over.
She doesn't want to make a decision tonight but from her words and her flat, diplomatic tone, I believe she's already made her decision. She revealed that following our last big talk last week, she'd wanted to give us a couple more weeks to see how “opened up” Cody was. So she was obviously contemplating the end. What hurt me the most during our conversation tonight was her lack of emotional response to the prospect of breaking up. I was tearing up and struggling to keep my voice steady; she seemed displeased by the topic but not upset in any way. I've seen that type of detached response before, when the girl has already given up on the relationship and now has the burdensome task of breaking-up before her.
I lost my hold on her heart somewhere along the way. There was a time when the mere specter of breaking up would cause her to cry, but that girl wasn't here tonight. She said that she'd felt the loss of the “romantic lovey-dovey” feeling that helped her overlook/overcome our differences 2 or 3 months into our relationship, brought on largely by my emotional reticence. That's been an ongoing issue for her, that I was never as emotionally effusive or intimately communicative with her as she needed me to be. Since that issue came up often I'd been deliberately working to change that and although recently she's been commenting favorably on my improvement, it hasn't repaired what was lost in those formative months. She'd told me essentially as much a month ago, but I didn't recognize that she meant the spark was gone. That change coincides with the platonic stretch of the last couple of months. As I've learned to my bitter realization, sex is the first thing to die when a relationship is failing. Of course, at the time I thought it was just an issue confined solely to physical intimacy, not the canary in the mine.
We clicked strongly in some ways, but strongly pulled apart by our divergent personalities. It's placed stress on our relationship from the very start and for a long while now I questioned whether I would eventually be able to adapt or if she/I would run out of patience. As frustrating as it was, it was bearable so long as I saw some possibility of reconciliation, so long as I perceived that she was trying just as hard as I was. Jane would often nudge me to admit that I loved her and while there were many times that I could hardly hold it back, that budding emotion was often eclipsed by my frustrations at the moment. I should have said it when I felt it instead of being so stern with myself and keeping my mouth shut until I was 100% certain. Lately, despite my increased efforts to improve myself for her, I didn't see any improvement in our relationship; the gap didn't seem to be shrinking. I know a few weeks isn't much time to change course, but in our six-month relationship, it should have been a significant span of time.
In past relationships I would often write about them in my journal. I've hardly written about this one because I wanted to commit myself to it in real-time, rather than retreating into my thoughts where she couldn't see my feelings. I wanted to be more active and engaged and communicative. I fell far short of her expectations. Maybe I was naive to expect that we could overcome our significant differences. I was often disgruntled over how I didn't seem to be important to her and she bore my displeasure for a long time. I regret being so hard on her. I'll never really know if that's how she really felt or if it was just a symptom of the other issues she deals with.
Maybe my immaturity sabotaged our potential. Perhaps both. Despite all the trivial shit that I got worked up about, I still care for her strongly and would stay in this relationship. But she doesn't feel the same.
Although I said I would try to change and I earnestly did, I had doubts that I could be what she wanted. It sounded like another man entirely, not me. Stubbornness made me want to resist and have her adapt to me, but her behavior never changed except for some lip service and some ineffectual attempts to shift her sleep schedule. That was the line I'd drawn in the sand and I feel that if I'd retreated from that, I would not have been able to respect myself within this relationship. I don't know if I was right or wrong. I always felt that my requests were modest; shift her sleep schedule so that we would be conscious at the same time instead of ships passing in the night and to be more communicative about our sex life. Of course I'm biased about my standing requests. Most of her requests were also simple, but there were just so many of them. And the ones most important to her seemed so vague; I never knew if I was succeeding or failing. I suppose it could be attributed to her OCD condition or due to her being “high maintenance” (her own words). All those requests chafed, moreso when I didn't see my efforts reciprocated. But who knows if there was a true inequity or if it only existed in my eyes.
Goddammit. I don't know how I managed to lose her. I know I resisted her talk of baby names and living together. It wasn't because I was truly opposed to the idea, just that I knew these were serious fantasies and didn't want to imply something before it was the right time. Again, we're different. I was a realist in those matters and couldn't/wouldn't give Jane the emotional support/confirmation she was looking for.
Shit, I really wanted to be with her. I thought we could iron out our differences and come to an understanding, find a way that worked for both of us.
I'm sitting at a park bench at an elementary school at one a.m. I can't go home because I took the train here. Jane doesn't like that I prompted her to make a decision tonight. She asked if we could revisit this matter in the morning. That was the one moment during this difficult talk when I smiled. In all likelihood my emotional distress coupled with my tendency to be a light sleeper would probably have me up at dawn and Jane probably wouldn't wake up before noon due to her sleeping medication. I told Jane that I didn't want to endure those hours of limbo. Buy my unspoken reason was because I wanted to hear her say definitively that we were over or if she still harbored hope for us. She retreated to her room and I went for a walk. So as of this writing, we're at a juncture. As much as I might wish it, I don't hold out hope for the positive outcome. This talk we had didn't cause her any visible pain because she's already let go of me in her heart. No amount of rational deliberation is going to change how she feels.
About a month ago we played a “game” where we asked each other questions of an increasingly personal nature. This list of questions was purported to cultivate a real intimate connection for couples that were just starting out. The game was fun/touching up until the last question, which essentially asked, “What is your biggest fear concerning your relationship?” I responded first and voiced how I was afraid that I'd give up on trying to meet Jane's expectations or try fully and fail all the same. Jane's response (as I interpreted it) was: she was afraid of deciding if she should stay in her current relationship at the risk of not being fulfilled or try to find one more fitting for her. What I heard was basically, “Do I settle for Cody or try to find true happiness?” Her answer really ripped into me. I took it as an admission that she wanted to break up. I was on the verge of leaving; I couldn't share a bed with her after that. Somehow she dissuaded me from leaving and explained that she hadn't meant her answer in the way I'd understood it. I forget how she re-explained it, but afterwards I couldn't help but feel that I'd heard her clearly the first time.
She doesn't want to make a decision tonight but from her words and her flat, diplomatic tone, I believe she's already made her decision. She revealed that following our last big talk last week, she'd wanted to give us a couple more weeks to see how “opened up” Cody was. So she was obviously contemplating the end. What hurt me the most during our conversation tonight was her lack of emotional response to the prospect of breaking up. I was tearing up and struggling to keep my voice steady; she seemed displeased by the topic but not upset in any way. I've seen that type of detached response before, when the girl has already given up on the relationship and now has the burdensome task of breaking-up before her.
I lost my hold on her heart somewhere along the way. There was a time when the mere specter of breaking up would cause her to cry, but that girl wasn't here tonight. She said that she'd felt the loss of the “romantic lovey-dovey” feeling that helped her overlook/overcome our differences 2 or 3 months into our relationship, brought on largely by my emotional reticence. That's been an ongoing issue for her, that I was never as emotionally effusive or intimately communicative with her as she needed me to be. Since that issue came up often I'd been deliberately working to change that and although recently she's been commenting favorably on my improvement, it hasn't repaired what was lost in those formative months. She'd told me essentially as much a month ago, but I didn't recognize that she meant the spark was gone. That change coincides with the platonic stretch of the last couple of months. As I've learned to my bitter realization, sex is the first thing to die when a relationship is failing. Of course, at the time I thought it was just an issue confined solely to physical intimacy, not the canary in the mine.
We clicked strongly in some ways, but strongly pulled apart by our divergent personalities. It's placed stress on our relationship from the very start and for a long while now I questioned whether I would eventually be able to adapt or if she/I would run out of patience. As frustrating as it was, it was bearable so long as I saw some possibility of reconciliation, so long as I perceived that she was trying just as hard as I was. Jane would often nudge me to admit that I loved her and while there were many times that I could hardly hold it back, that budding emotion was often eclipsed by my frustrations at the moment. I should have said it when I felt it instead of being so stern with myself and keeping my mouth shut until I was 100% certain. Lately, despite my increased efforts to improve myself for her, I didn't see any improvement in our relationship; the gap didn't seem to be shrinking. I know a few weeks isn't much time to change course, but in our six-month relationship, it should have been a significant span of time.
In past relationships I would often write about them in my journal. I've hardly written about this one because I wanted to commit myself to it in real-time, rather than retreating into my thoughts where she couldn't see my feelings. I wanted to be more active and engaged and communicative. I fell far short of her expectations. Maybe I was naive to expect that we could overcome our significant differences. I was often disgruntled over how I didn't seem to be important to her and she bore my displeasure for a long time. I regret being so hard on her. I'll never really know if that's how she really felt or if it was just a symptom of the other issues she deals with.
Maybe my immaturity sabotaged our potential. Perhaps both. Despite all the trivial shit that I got worked up about, I still care for her strongly and would stay in this relationship. But she doesn't feel the same.
Although I said I would try to change and I earnestly did, I had doubts that I could be what she wanted. It sounded like another man entirely, not me. Stubbornness made me want to resist and have her adapt to me, but her behavior never changed except for some lip service and some ineffectual attempts to shift her sleep schedule. That was the line I'd drawn in the sand and I feel that if I'd retreated from that, I would not have been able to respect myself within this relationship. I don't know if I was right or wrong. I always felt that my requests were modest; shift her sleep schedule so that we would be conscious at the same time instead of ships passing in the night and to be more communicative about our sex life. Of course I'm biased about my standing requests. Most of her requests were also simple, but there were just so many of them. And the ones most important to her seemed so vague; I never knew if I was succeeding or failing. I suppose it could be attributed to her OCD condition or due to her being “high maintenance” (her own words). All those requests chafed, moreso when I didn't see my efforts reciprocated. But who knows if there was a true inequity or if it only existed in my eyes.
Goddammit. I don't know how I managed to lose her. I know I resisted her talk of baby names and living together. It wasn't because I was truly opposed to the idea, just that I knew these were serious fantasies and didn't want to imply something before it was the right time. Again, we're different. I was a realist in those matters and couldn't/wouldn't give Jane the emotional support/confirmation she was looking for.
Shit, I really wanted to be with her. I thought we could iron out our differences and come to an understanding, find a way that worked for both of us.
I'm sitting at a park bench at an elementary school at one a.m. I can't go home because I took the train here. Jane doesn't like that I prompted her to make a decision tonight. She asked if we could revisit this matter in the morning. That was the one moment during this difficult talk when I smiled. In all likelihood my emotional distress coupled with my tendency to be a light sleeper would probably have me up at dawn and Jane probably wouldn't wake up before noon due to her sleeping medication. I told Jane that I didn't want to endure those hours of limbo. Buy my unspoken reason was because I wanted to hear her say definitively that we were over or if she still harbored hope for us. She retreated to her room and I went for a walk. So as of this writing, we're at a juncture. As much as I might wish it, I don't hold out hope for the positive outcome. This talk we had didn't cause her any visible pain because she's already let go of me in her heart. No amount of rational deliberation is going to change how she feels.
About a month ago we played a “game” where we asked each other questions of an increasingly personal nature. This list of questions was purported to cultivate a real intimate connection for couples that were just starting out. The game was fun/touching up until the last question, which essentially asked, “What is your biggest fear concerning your relationship?” I responded first and voiced how I was afraid that I'd give up on trying to meet Jane's expectations or try fully and fail all the same. Jane's response (as I interpreted it) was: she was afraid of deciding if she should stay in her current relationship at the risk of not being fulfilled or try to find one more fitting for her. What I heard was basically, “Do I settle for Cody or try to find true happiness?” Her answer really ripped into me. I took it as an admission that she wanted to break up. I was on the verge of leaving; I couldn't share a bed with her after that. Somehow she dissuaded me from leaving and explained that she hadn't meant her answer in the way I'd understood it. I forget how she re-explained it, but afterwards I couldn't help but feel that I'd heard her clearly the first time.
