Before I left for Thanksgiving break, I got a text from the guy I was casually seeing. He had been uncharacteristically spotty with his communication the whole week, and I picked up on a shift of some sort. He calmly and maturely texted me that he was developing feelings for someone else and believed it wouldn’t be fair to either one of us if he continued to see me and pursue her. I understood, as I am no stranger to this situation — I’ve been on both sides of it. Ironically enough, I had done the same thing to him last year during winter break, when things got complicated with an ex whom I once described as a hurricane. When I got his messages, I was upset, confused and even embarrassed, but I did understand. I think that’s what hurts the most.
The situation was hard, but he handled it correctly. The reasoning, the logic — everything he needed to present a sizable argument were present. We had never actually defined what we were doing, and there was a casualness that surrounded the situation every time we hung out. I would be leaving in two short months to go abroad, and he would be staying in Boston. If he could find happiness with someone else, then that’s the best for him. One of my friends described what we were doing as being at a crossroads between establishing what we were and letting it go. Keeping things casual worked for as long as it could. At the end of the day, however, I couldn’t compete with his emotions for someone else regardless of how I felt about him. Now I carry words I’ll never say to him and pack them into a box, making it easier to forget them.
Relationships come with many existing variables — timing, emotion, situation and history are just a few examples. No matter how hard we try to control things and keep them stable, we can’t. Things end, people move on and we try to move forward as best as we can. Timing has always been something that I’ve struggled with as I always get myself into relationships that have expiration dates. May it be the person that was graduating soon, leaving for home or going abroad, a problem always arose. There is no remedy for timing and no easy formula to evade feelings when the clock is ticking. Sometimes things end because they have to end. Sometimes things end because there is no possible way for them to continue. Sometimes things end to minimize the damage that one would feel if they were to persist.
One of the hardest parts of this whole process is slowly waning him out of my life. I am aware that this is the best possible thing for me to do, but when I see something that reminds me of him, it’s weird not to reach out to him. We were friends first, and there was rarely a topic that we didn’t tackle. Slowly letting go of those sentiments is just going to be a matter of time. Usually, I would be able to pack all my emotions into a column and write about all the ways someone has wronged me. This time is different. This time, there’s an understanding. The respect I feel for him and our underlying friendship make letting go just a bit harder.
Emotion is one of the factors in life and relationships that we cannot control. We can’t control the feelings we have for other people or their feelings. The last time I saw him, we talked about what we were doing. He joked that if he were seeing someone else, he’d tell me. I half-jokingly asked him if that were true, knowing from my experience in past relationships that the lack of openness historically came from the other side. I have always preached openness and honesty, no matter what the emotional consequences were. The truth was, he did end up telling me. At the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for.
Meredith loves telling stories and pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, minus the man and comfy NYC apartment. She, however, eats enough brunch to cover all six seasons. When she's not drowning in 16th-century literature, she can be found lamenting over the bad grammar and bad boys in her middle school diary.
Find her on twitter @merewilsh or email her mwilsher@bu.edu with all your love musings or questions.
