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Estimated reading time: 17 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove: My first (and only) ever love and I met at 11 years old. We started off as best friends. At 12 he asked me to be his girlfriend twice whilst dancing slow at a school event, but I declined. I think he always had a crush on me and I always secretly found him attractive. At 17 years old, he asked me out again and I said yes. He was my first everything. My first love, my first kiss, my first touch. It was magical experiencing everything with him for the first time. He always treated me with respect and was very patient with me. It was so amazing because we were not just romantic partners, we were also best friends. I couldn’t be more grateful for him. I still to this day find him very attractive, and we have a good sexual chemistry.
He had always been all for me. He always made me feel like the only woman on this earth, told me how beautiful I was every single day. He supported me through my darkest times and through my eating disorder like no one could. He is a wonderful person full of positive energy and kindness. He has goals, we shared very similar interests, we love sports and games and camping, hiking, reading books, running and board games. He always respected me and valued me. He loved my family and always made a huge effort with my friends. He is super in touch with his emotions and his feminine side. He is a good listener and could comfort me in the way I needed to be comforted. He had told me that he found his person in me. He is everything I look for in a partner.
However after 3 years of being together, I was having doubts. We were doing long distance. I was at uni in the UK and he was in the army for a year back in Cyprus. That summer, I found myself wanting to flirt with other boys which told me something was wrong. I also always had in mind that I wanted to be independent, to grow individually as a person, to ‘find myself’ on my own and not rely on anyone. I always had my parents in mind saying that it’s important to not stay with your first boyfriend and live some years alone as the 20s can be very formative and you need to know who you are and what you want before you settle down. So I ended things.
However, a friend of mine set us back up and 2 months later we got back together. I remember getting panic attacks those first few weeks and being very anxious, worrying if it was the right decision for me. After one year, I again felt that the relationship was coming to an end. We didn’t ever have major issues in our relationship. However, I remember myself feeling unsure about us but never could quite understand why. I thought that I should be single at least for some time, and find out who I am when I am not in a relationship. I wanted to explore what it is like being single, to experience the world, flirt (not necessarily have sex with different people though really not my thing). But surely if I wanted him enough, I wouldn’t want to break up… Right?
I remember when we were breaking up he was asking me why. I remember sitting in the car after I told him I think I am not in love with him anymore, and he asked me “What do you think being in love is? Do you feel you don’t love me anymore? Do we not have fun together? Are we not best friends? Do you not feel safe with me?”. I didn’t know what to tell him because my answer to all those questions was yes. I do love you, We do have fun, we are best friends. I do feel safe with you. “Then why?” I didn’t know how to respond to that.
After that, I went on a year abroad to Madrid. I had the most amazing time whilst he was hurting. We would speak every 3 months or so on the phone (video calls which would last for 9 hours). It has now been 1.5 years since we broke up. Neither of us has moved on with another person. Even though I flirted, I didn’t want to share my body with anyone. Every 5 months or so we see each other and sleep together. I know it’s very bad… It is hard not to as we have common friends, we live 3 minutes away from each other and I miss him soooo much. Also I still find him attractive and we do have chemistry.
Over the weekend I saw him again and felt rejected from him for the first time. For the first time I felt like I was losing him forever. I think that’s when I realised that it ended, because I think I always had in my mind that this was just a phase and I would eventually want to go back to him. We had a 5 and a half hour call where he basically told me that he doesn’t want us to be in contact if we are not together. I cried for the whole 5 hours. It is only now that I think I am processing this as a real break up. It felt like my heart shattered in a million pieces. I hate the idea of never speaking to him again. I so really want to want him to be my person. I could be so happy with him. He is everything I look for in a partner. But there is something that is holding me back. I don’t understand what it is. Is it instinct? He once told me that he found his person in me. I wish I could be 100% sure that I have found mine in him, that he is the man of my life. It is what he deserves. I feel like if it was right then it would be very clear, I would just know. Right? It would be simple, right? But I feel unsure. Maybe that’s my answer? But I don’t want to let him go. I can imagine him being with another woman. I am devastated to lose him. I hate myself for letting him go. I hate myself for hurting him. For hurting us. I feel like life has gifted me with the greatest gift and I am just throwing it away. I am having a hard time accepting that this is not the man of my life. That my heart for some reason doesn’t want me to be with him. I am having a hard time forgiving myself for that. I am having a hard time letting him go and imagining a life without him.
A few days ago, I wrote him a love letter and was ready to send it to him, telling him I want to get back together, I want to fight for him for us, I wanted him to be the man of my life to marry and have children. But then I talked to a friend who told me to do it but for the right reasons. Do it because I love him not because I am afraid or because it’s too difficult to lose him. A feeling of doubt arose again. What if those doubts arise again when I go back to him? What if they arise when we get married? What if I have to break his heart again? His family will be livid with me. I feel like I cannot go back to him if I am not 100% sure as I don’t want to break his heart for a third time. If I do go back, I want to be sure that this is the man that I want forever.
I want to choose him to be in my life. I want to make it work. But then something in my gut is not so sure again… And I know I know I know that we should listen to our gut but I really don’t want to right now. I know I am in denial. I wish I could change this doubt / instinct feeling, I wish I could get rid of it, as its costing me my best friend. It is forcing me to say goodbye to my best friend. It’s unfair.
And then thoughts like these come in my head. What is love? I hear that love is a choice. That you make a choice of loving someone and devoting to someone. That you choose a partner to go through life together and support each other.
So should I follow my “instinct”, or should I make a choice to choose him?
Maybe if it was right it wouldn’t be this difficult? Maybe I should just let him go…
How Do I Know When It’s Love?
Oh man, these are the questions I hate to answer because what people want most is something simple and definitive… and you’re not going to find that. There aren’t simple answers when it comes to questions about love or what’s right or how you know you’re making the right choice. You don’t and you never really will, because what does “right” mean in this case?
I’m asking a serious question: What does “the right choice” mean? Will getting back together be the “right” choice if you were to break up again in a year? In five years? In ten? Will it only be “right” if you two get back together and stay a couple until one or both of you dies?
Will it be the “right” choice to stay apart if you knew that getting back together was only going to lead to hearbreak – yours or his – and that this was an inevitability that couldn’t be avoided?
So I’m going to take a bit of a digression here. Stick with me, I promise it’ll make sense in a moment.
I honestly don’t like most romantic comedies or movies about relationships that try to make definitive statements about love. Some of it is a drawback of my profession; I spend a lot of time grousing about how many romcoms and TV shows wouldn’t have half the issues if the cast would just read a few books about polyamory already – looking at you Vampire Diaries – or muttering about how someone’s not actually in love, they’ve just latched onto the idea of someone (see also: 500 Days of Summer) or how the relationship isn’t going to last past the end credits (Before Sunrise).
I’m fun at parties…
Anyway, there’re always a few that sneak in that I really like. Some are just sweet while also addressing how shitty some tropes in romcoms are, like What If. Some, like Chasing Amy, acknowledge that the leads can’t work as a couple precisely because one of them hasn’t actually grown or changed; in any other movie, Holden would’ve been rewarded with everything he wanted, just for being the movie’s protagonist.
But one I especially enjoy is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – because of what it says flat out: these people are awful for each other. Every time they get together, they will inevitably break up. They have an actual track record to prove it. And the movie stops at the end to say “so… what happens now? Do they try again? Or do they learn their lesson?”
This is an interesting question because, unlike with most other romantic movies, we have actually know how it played out and why. We watch Clementine and Joel through their entire relationship, from start to finish. We see precisely why the two of them are drawn together, where the fissures are in their relationship – the ones that were there from the beginning. We see the choices they make, we are literally in Joel’s head and get to see precisely why they break up and why things end so badly that they both choose to forget the other person – making it as if the entire relationship never happened except for the passage of time. And we see, over the course of the movie, that they know that this is their fate. That this is the cycle they’ve been going through many times now.
And the movie strongly suggests that they will choose to do it again. They will meet each other and see what drew them together the first time. Even as everything is falling apart, as their memories are being wiped away (again), they want to give it another try
Why? Because while it may end in tears and recrimination, what they have while it’s good is so good that they feel like it’s worth it to give it another try. To hold onto the hope that maybe this time they’ll have grown and changed enough to not make the same mistakes in the future. And the bittersweet knowledge that no, no they won’t… because the end of the cycle means that they lose those lessons like it never happened.
But there’s just enough of a romantic left in my bitter-ass heart to see that the struggle and the cycle is still worth the attempt – as if maybe loving hard enough will be enough to bend the very fabric of the universe to say “fuck you, we reject your fate. We refuse to believe that this is inevitable. We reject your reality and substitute our own,” and to make it stick.
Is that the “right” choice? Well… to some, probably not. Some people look at that and think that this is just Sisyphus continuing to roll his rock up the hill in parallel. It’s Tantalus thinking that maybe this time he’ll be able to taste the fruit, get a sip of water, making each failure that much more painful and tear away another piece of their soul.
But to others? It absolutely is. The pain is the price they’re willing to pay for the pleasure that comes before… and, this time, if they choose not to forget, they may come out on the other side.
Now I bring all that up because… well that’s more or less where you’re at. Quite frankly, you’ve got a lot arrayed against you that says this is a bad idea and it’s only going to end in tears – it’s not even the dance remix of your last break up, but an entirely new song that’s somehow harsher and more intense for the time that elapsed since the last.
I’m not gonna lie, HDKWL, first relationships almost never last. High-school sweethearts very, very rarely survive the transition between high-school and university. I can count the number of couples who are still with their first love on the fingers of one hand with enough left over to play Call of Duty with a mouse and keyboard.
You also, and I’m going to be blunt here, broke your guy’s heart. Multiple times at this point. I’m not saying that to say that you were the villain in this. Honestly, I think you made a wise decision by deciding to end things so that you could grow as an individual, rather than as one half of a couple. People are always growing and changing, and that means that sometimes the relationship can’t grow with them. Who they grow into isn’t necessarily compatible with who they were at the start. That’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not that you didn’t fight hard enough to grow together or in the “right way”. It’s just that you two were on a journey together for a while, then reached the point where your paths diverged. Trying to stay together would’ve meant sacrificing who you were growing into… which is a choice, but one that would likely have made things worse down the line.
But the fact that your paths diverged didn’t mean that they couldn’t bring you back together again. It just because a question of whether the you that you and the him that exist now are right for each other. And you may not be. That’s a risk. That’s one of the many leaps of faith that you’d have to make if you two were to get together again.
However, there’re other complications. The fact remains that you broke his heart. You hurt him, badly. It may have been a necessary pain, but it’s still pain none the less and while it may have been necessary for you, that doesn’t make it easier to bear for him. That wound may never have fully closed. It may have cut so deeply and scarred so thoroughly that there’s no place for you any more. Or it may have hurt so badly that he’s closed the gates to you, rather than give you another chance to hurt him like that again.
These, too, are the leaps you have to make.
What I can tell you is that certainty isn’t a measure of anything. People can be dead certain about things and be 100% wrong. People can be riddled with doubt and worry, forever looking at every possible angle, seeing every possible permutation of how things could go horribly, catastrophically wrong. And yet they still close their eyes, take a breath and make the leap anyway and discover that they were right. How certain or uncertain, sure or unsure you are isn’t an inherent metric of how correct you are. It’s just a measure in your confidence in your own decision making. But confidence isn’t the same thing as correctness. If it were, we’d all be like the Road Runner, able to run into a tunnel that’s just painted on a rock wall, or to run in mid-air like it was solid land as long as we don’t look down. But we aren’t and we can’t. We can only just make the leap and hope. That’s why it’s a leap of faith.
Now what I think is important to consider is how long it’s been, how much you’ve changed, how much you’ve grown, how much you’ve seen and done and become and you know that your guy is still very important to you. He’s someone you still see as a significant part of your life, someone you miss dearly. That, to my mind, suggests that those feelings are strong and genuine, not just the golden haze of nostalgia or the longing for the familiar. That’s a mark in the plus column.
Now if you need an additional push one way or the other, then you should answer my standard questions for whether you should get back together with your ex:
Question #1: Why did you break up in the first place?
Question #2: Has the reason why you broke up changed?
Question #3: Why Now?
Question #4: Do you miss THEM, or do you miss what they represent?
Question #5: Are they right for you, NOW?
These questions are to help you think things through, to go beyond just the raw feeling, the longing for them and the feeling of loss and to really think with your brain as much as with your heart. If you can’t answer them, or you don’t have answers that are beyond “Because” or “because I want to”, then no, it’s probably not a great idea.
But if you can answer them? If you can give long, complete, detailed answers that would say that yes, you’ve thought this through, yes you know what you’re doing, no it’s not just missing what you used to have? Well, you are still going to have challenges.
The biggest is that you are still remembering him from when you were together, when you were young. That’s not who he is any more and that’s not who you are anymore. If you two are going to date again, then it’s not going to be the two of you getting back together. It’s going to be the two of you meeting for the first time as your new selves. You’re going to have to see this not as a resumption of your old relationship, but the start of a brand new one. You’re going to have to be willing and able to let go of the old patterns, old habits and old expectations and to get to know one another as though you were relative strangers. The old patterns may be familiar, but they’re like shoes you’ve outgrown; you remember how they used to feel but now they pinch and rub and blister in places that they never did before. You have to start fresh, without expecting to pick up where you left off. You didn’t leave off; your last relationship reached the end of its’ natural lifespan.
This is a new relationship, just with someone you already knew and have to get to know again. And with that comes the same uncertainty, the same impossibility of predicting the future that comes with any relationship but with the added challenge of the past you’ve already shared… including the hurt that came with when that relationship died.
That’s why it’s a leap of faith. You can’t have certainty that you’re making the right choice. There’s no way for anyone to know. No mortal mind can comprehend the paths that you might take, no quantum computer can process all the variables that may present themselves. If you two decide that you’re still in love and want to try again – knowing that it may end in tears once more – then you both have to be willing to hold hands, release of your earthly tether and take that leap of faith together, knowing that you may both just fall.
But that’s the thing about leaps of faith. Sometimes, you don’t fall.
Sometimes you soar.
But that’s the call that you’ll both have to make.
Good luck.
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