The stated reason for terminating the relationship was that I brought to the table a surfeit of drama, and given the upheaval caused by the last bout of medication musical chairs I can completely understand. If “high-maintenance” means ready tears, irrational anger and a propensity toward jealousy where none need exist, then I absolutely was high-maintenance. I was very, very high-maintenance.
Now, several weeks later, I watch from the safe distance of “friendship” as he and his new girlfriend mobilize forces to help out another friend stuck in a situation with drama that is by any objective measure far greater than my own. By all accounts he’s expended enormous energy to make things right for his friend, spending days in physical labor and more in emotional strain for the noble goal of accompanying her to a better place in her life.
Lucky her, I think to myself, that somehow her drama was not too much to be borne. Lucky her, that the sum total of her maintenance was not so high as mine.
Lucky her.
His voice woke me at 3am. “I can’t wait to spend the day with my incredible new girlfriend!” he said. I knew it was a dream but slipped right back into it. We were sitting in a restaurant booth; on one side he snuggled his new friend while on the other, I sat over a plate of intricately prepared artichokes. I plucked out leaf after leaf, nibbling around each edge as I watched them murmur to each other and coo. Three years, I wanted to say. How can you have moved on so quickly after three years with me? But I stayed quiet, separating the choke from the heart, cutting it into neat bits and chewing oh-so-carefully before moving on to the next piece.
I wonder if the deciding factor was not a quantity of drama but a quality. “I’m tired of dealing with all the drama” he said, but “I’m tired of dealing with you” would perhaps have been more accurate. Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity — it says so on my arm. It hurt enough to have it placed there. You’d think I’d be able to remember it.
In the dream I fumbled in my wallet and placed on the table bills far more than sufficient to pay for the meal. Abandoning my plate — one artichoke in ruins, the other untouched — and without a word to the new lovers, I left.
——
******Please do not bash my former partner in the comments. It’s not what I want and it would in fact make everyone involved feel worse rather than better. Thank you.******
I’m sorry. I know that feeling. Of wondering how someone could move on so quickly. Of having someone decide that I’m too much work or effort or drama. Of feeling rejected because of who I am, because of things I can’t help. And I know how much it hurts.
Sending lots of hugs. Did you ever consider that maybe it’s best *not* to be friends right away? I tried that with my last partner, and it ended up being too hard for us and we had to cut contact. Maybe in the future, we can be friends again, but I find it difficult to be friends when wounds are fresh.
Yeah, I agree. Too hard to be friends when the wounds are that fresh. When my ex-girlfriend un-friended me on facebook, I thought it was the most immature thing she could’ve done, and bitched about it to everybody. Turns out it was a blessing — stalking was rendered impossible! And I’m all the better for it.
Anyway… ugh, break-ups are hard :( And somehow they never actually ARE what they’re claimed to be on the surface.
For all of the social niceties that require us to gloss over the reasons we leave, break up and run away, sometimes it would just be more helpful to state what the real motive is. I agree with you. It sounds like it has more to do with the quality of the drama than the quantity, and unfortunately, if he had just said that to you in the first place, you probably wouldn’t be having dreams where you’re cutting at your heart (well, your artichoke heart, anyway). The truth hurts, but it’s a cleaner wound than all of the bullshit.
Big fan of your blog, and I read it all the time. I just don’t comment often.
I’m not into bashing, but this makes me think about why relationships end and whether endings are inevitable as the initial glow of optimism and excitement cools and the lovers see each other more as they really are. Just think where he and his new lover will be three years hence. Together?
i agree. When my last husband made the decision to break our family, he had a host of “good” reasons to go back on every promise we’d made to each other. Among them were mostly what he saw as my failings, sparsely sprinkled with a few of his own. Only he and i will ever know what his real, underlying reason for leaving was. However, his vow that he would not ever try to maintain a relationship again would prove short-lived. i was shocked to find out that before our divorce was even final, he was already in a serious relationship with someone his mother told me was “just like [me], but without the benefit of being [her] grandchildren’s mother.”
All these years later, they are still together, but only if my ex never allows his son to live with him. An order of magnitude more selfish than myself this woman is, to ask a man to chose between his child and his lover. i know what he will choose, i hope she understands what she’s going to lose.
I’m so sorry…
I could never understand people that don’t allow any “down time” between relationships. I’m actually more curious as to what the artichokes represent in your dream. Could the nibbled, ruined one be the many layers of the past relationship and the untouched one represent a new and unknown one that you’re not willing to tackle at the present time? Does leaving without a word mean you’re accepting that it’s done and you’re moving on?
That is some serious ink, aag.
Last night, and perhaps the night before that, I wished for my former lover to visit me in my dreams, just to spend a few more moments in his company. He also has a new lover, hence the former nature of my status. I hoped for a few moments away from the pain, not another heaping helping.
I guess I should be careful what I wish for.
I will hold you in the light, today, AAG. I share your pain.
In my experience,it only takes one bad day to end a relationship of years. It only takes one day for someone to have their feelings change. One day to have it end then weeks or months to get over it.
Yeah… I am sorry too for your pain. There is not much more to offer than that, other than a hug (or two or three.)
I admit I shed a couple of tears over this, because we’ve all been there before, though none of us in exactly the same way. I am always amazed at how much the heart can survive, even when you think it can’t possibly anymore.
But somehow it does… it amazingly, achingly, appalingly, aggravatingly does. (At least that is my experience.)
Hugs! Thanks for sharing this.
Hugs.
(Relationships are too specifically complex to be generally commented on from afar imo.)
So I offer supportive hugs.
Yeah, I hate when that happens… My ex jumped right into another relationship as well. The breakup was a long time in coming, and probably for the best, but it just added salt to the wound. It made me doubt his fidelity for the last several months of the relationship and made me wonder if he’d ever really loved me if I could be so easily replaced. It took the benefit of time and distance for me to realize it had nothing to do with me. That same time and distance has allowed us to eventually become friends. Go figure.
And I love a good artichoke.
AAG, I feel for you
Nitebyrd, I love “serious ink” and I totally concur.
Is “serious ink” a good thing or no?
:: confused ::
I read it as a good thing, harking back to the day of print.
It interesting in the day of blogs since ‘those were some serious bits’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.
AAG – I do feel for you and I’m very sorry for the pain you’re feeling.
I do have to say that I have been the partner on the other side. Being the partner of someone with a mental illness of any kind is incredibly difficult. After a while sometimes you have to walk away for your own mental health and well being. My husband and I split because I could no longer deal with his depression. The mood swings, the frustration, the meds, the walking on eggshells because I never had any idea what would set him off or if he’d be suicidal vs angry .. I couldn’t do it any more and maintain my own sanity and health. I still love him and care about him but I can’t be married to him any more.
I’m sure he felt (and to some degree) still feels the pain you do. I hate that I had to hurt him in order to be happy myself. I hate that the fact that I’m in a new relationship now hurts him. It hurts me too in a lot of ways. And maybe that sounds selfish of me, since I’m the one that made the choice and I’m the one who couldn’t maintain the “for worse” and “in sickness” part of my vows.
I only know that for the last several years of my marriage i was miserable, unhappy, lonely, sad, unhealthy … and so many other things. It isn’t any fun being the person on the other side either. Knowing that I’m not the person I thought I was – that I’m not willing to be there no matter what – has changed me too.
I’m sorry for both of us. I’m sorry for your former partner. It all sucks sometimes.
Serious ink = excellent! ;)
I’m on the other side too. In my case, yes I was the drama, made worse by how obviously unhappy and tired-of-trying-to-make-it-work my ex was. We split and I found a new love almost straight away! Two months later we were living together. I felt awful over how much that hurt my ex to the point that I even avoided our mutual friends for 6 months. My ex wasn’t to be consoled however and we are not friends to this day.
Ultimately we’re both so much happier in our new lives, it’s just such a shame that it had to cause so much pain. It is very brave of you to continue the friendship even through such a thing. Kudos to you.
A few years ago a guy I was getting to know listed 101 ways in which I was “too complicated” for him. Needless to say, I was not happy with him. I was also not happy with myself. I had spent a lot of time and money (hello, nearly a decade of therapy and antidepressants!) and effort trying to be “normal enough” to be dateable. All of that effort had not paid off, because here was Guy #895,235,224 telling me why I was nice enough for a friend, but too complicated to be his girlfriend.
The good thing is the pain of that experience finally drove home something I had not quite grasped, before:
I am me, complexities and all, AND THAT IS OKAY.
That realization came out of a screaming fit I was having in my closet (with the stereo blaring to mask the noise from my neighbors) over how unfair it was to have been dumped when I was trying so hard. I realized that I was spending so much time and energy in the hopes that I would earn someone else’s approval, rather than spending that time and energy learning to approve of myself. I decided to take a break from dating to learn how to celebrate me, so I would stop thinking I wasn’t good enough. It turned out to be time and energy well spent, because beginning that day I started liking myself more than I ever had, before.
I hope you can turn the pain of your former partner’s rejection around into something that is positive for you, too.
By the way, after that conversation with him I did not renew our friendship…though he persisted in calling me against my wishes several times after that. I refused to have a front-row seat in his life to see him fall for someone else. I love myself too much to subject myself to that kind of pain.
I’ll do the opposite of bash him; I’ll defend him.
First of all, I have bipolar disorder too. Living with it is tough.
Loving someone who has it is tougher. You and I have a serious, chronic, and potentially fatal illness (BD has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness). It takes a VERY special person to commit to loving someone like us, for however long they can handle it.
Didn’t your ex leave ostensibly for the same reason– not being able to deal with the drama? Whatever, it happens.
In most-recent-lover’s case, you got three years of love from a strong man who loved and thrilled you just the way you wanted, and gave of himself selflessly and with passion and dedication (unlike your ex, who seemed to just shrink away and hide). That’s not a bad run at all.
At the same time, leaving someone who is seriously ill can smell of selfish sleazery– kind of like John Edwards, John McCain, or Newt Gingrich cheating on and dumping their cancer-stricken wives– but it doesn’t sound like this guy did that. He stuck it out; he handled it. Then he couldn’t handle it any more.
As for the drama he’s dealing with now, take note: it’s not his new girlfriend who is possessed of it. It’s a friend of theirs; he AND his girlfriend are dealing with it, together. That’s still a challenge– apparently the guy likes challenges, good on him– but very different than having a lover with a serious illness.
I am putting “I have bipolar disorder” in my dating profiles now. I don’t want to mislead anyone as to the challenges they’re taking on in dealing with me, and, even once they do, I don’t expect them to stick around any longer than they can handle.
I ended my marriage. Other than that, I think you are very correct.