The Break Up: When the Soulmate Shit Doesn’t Work

In a quiet corner on the ocean-view deck of the Crow’s Nest we started a conversation that lasted five years. We divulged stories and histories and the impacts of such that weights on us all year after year—the chains we drag around and rearrange. What can look trivial to an outsider had become known to us—we shared, analyzed, found blame and help each other forgive. Life was full, again.

It was an obsessive relationship—a gut reaction to the prior bad marriage. Jon was everything my ex wasn't. He was attentive, truly romantic, introspective and intelligent. We could talk about everything—great debates about religion and politics and science that went on for hours often in between the nightly marathon sexual events. And they were events; each one a mystical transcendence—an epic adventure that could be silently re-visited when friends inquired about the perpetual scabs on his knees or the blood stains on his pants. He blamed his basketball workouts but we smiled at each other, knowing the real story—the frequency and intensity of our lovemaking. It wasn't just sex and it was more than love; it was an energy exchange. Chemical.

Day after day he left sweet messages on my phone, notes on my pillow and said that nothing was right before I came into his life.  But as good things do and time and circumstance swirl up the dirt at our feet, a thing happened. A weird thing.

Four and a half years into our relationship, when he had to face the depression of an odd and inconvenient, but certainly not fatal, illness he lost all sense of himself. The therapist said it was post-traumatic stress but the urologist called it peyronies. Whatever you call it, he developed a sudden fear of our relationship and everything about us was called in to question.

He would disappear for days only to return hung over from a variety of substances, apologetic and guilt-ridden. He begged, I understood, I forgave, I supported. We talked endlessly over a hundred midnight hours. Nothing I said made any difference. I assured him it would not make any difference in our relationship but he didn't believe it. The hours crawled into months and then a year was nearly gone. More promises. More admissions. More acts of redemption, but nothing healed him emotionally so he began living comfortably numb. He nurtured his weaknesses until he broke me of him.

Then slowly, after months of soul-bearing and apologizing and shared tears, I told him to go away for good. No more coming back with tempting words. No more proclaiming love where there could be no exposure. He was to be fully there with me or completely out.

He was fading from my memory—slowly, daily, like old photographs; sometimes  I couldn’t picture him at all. I could sense a day coming when thinking of him would not produce a jump in my breathing or a stab of pain in my side that often triggered a panic attack.

Leaving Jon was the end and the beginning. Or maybe just a chasm I needed to cross to overwrite the space of him in my head. That never did work completely, but not for lack of trying. The more other men came in—the more Jon faded away.