The more things change

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I went back and read my last post, in which I waxed poetic about my relationship and expressed hope that things were finally turning around after a six-week separation. By that post, it seemed like everything was going great.

But things have turned south lately. We're not communicating with one another well. We're not talking as much. He had a party for the Fourth of July and didn't invite me.

Yeah, kind of a dick move if you ask me.

His general thoughtlessness and selfishness started to creep through. There were more mood swings. Fewer thoughtful gestures. Less sex. (Truly a measure of the health of a relationship, wouldn't you say?)

The more I started to see these things, the more denial I felt. I held on harder, tighter and tried to keep things from falling apart around me.

But the fact of the matter is, we're wrong for each other. My heart just needed time to catch up to that fact, a fact that I recognized a long time ago and rarely voiced aloud.

Today marked the end of the relationship. We were together a year. We did a good job. We had some laughs, some good times. But the relationship ran its course, and we both acknowledged that today. He isn't capable of giving me what I need, and even if he were, he wouldn't want to. That's not fair to me, so it was time for us to go our separate ways. If we're not moving forward, what are we doing?

I feel relieved.

It still hurts, of course. I'm sad, as I suppose I'll be for a long time. But this was good, it was right. I will be better and stronger for the relationship. I have learned a lot about who I am and the kind of man I want to be with.

It will take time to heal my broken heart, for as Pablo Neruda said, "Loving is so short, forgetting is so long." But in the end, I will be healed. I'll be revived. And I'll be ready for someone better.