”Will you love me forever?” “That’s until after dinner, right?”
It’s funny to me how life plays out sometimes. Just yesterday I wrote to all of you that I had chosen to stay with Sam. That I had made a firm decision in my heart and mind to stay in the relationship. What I failed to consider was that since there are two people in the relationship, there are two people who have to make the choices.
As it would turn out, Sam chose a different path. This was quite a shock to me since I had believed everything was finally OK with us. My error was in thinking that he felt everything was OK and was waiting for my decision.
As is obvious to me now, he wasn’t. Apparently during my time of withdrawal of the heart and emotional limbo, he was evaluating the relationship, too. And his answer seems to be that we did not have something worth working on or saving. By his choice, I can only assume he felt working on resolving the few issues we did have was more than he wanted to put into a relationship.
Isn’t it amazing – one small incident after a series of very painful incidents can alter the entire course of your future, and as quickly and deadly as a guillotine.
At this moment, my faith that relationships are two people striving for the same thing has been shattered. Perhaps that is my fault. Perhaps it is Sam’s.
I do know this. I tend to believe that if I decide something is good, then surely it is good; if I decide to love someone, surely they have the same love for me. These are character flaws that caused me much pain over and over again.
I have one close friend who tells me I see everything in terms of black and white; wrong or right; good or evil. Everything is a precise dichotomy. Two choices; two existences; two outcomes. He contends there is a grey area where somethings just are.
And I do not like that grey area. That was my emotional, painful, miserable limbo. It was grey – neither committed to the relationship or exactly out of the relationship. At that point I had not chosen. I prefer having a precise dichotomy. If you have narrowed your options, it is easier to make a choice. That is something they will tell you in marketing – don’t give the customer too many options, or they may lose interest because they had to evaluate so many things.
From the moment I did it, I felt good about my decision to stay. I was hopeful we had the strength and desire to make it work. I believed we could make it, therefore we would make it.
Not true.
Although Sam’s decision was to have some time, I believe that ultimately he was only asking for time in order to spare hurting me with a final goodbye. An aloha no. The final closed door. But still, he had only asked for time.
But time puts us, puts me, back into the grey limbo area. The place where there are no clear answers or choices. The grey place hurts; the grey place is sad; the grey place is simply “non” anything. It is a place I hope no one has to visit. And my intent, after spending two weeks there, was to never go there again.
So, Sam asks me for time. Sam wanted a “grey” choice for a while. And I simply could not bear it. So I chose something for him. I chose something for me.
The choice I made was for us to be over. No need for him to weigh everything out to decide whatever it was he felt needed some scrutiny. He no longer has to worry how to tell me he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. His decision has been made for him, and even through this, I am humane enough to want to spare someone else from that grey place.
And no grey limbo for me; my heart is closed to it, I can make plans to move on, I am not stuck in a grey area waiting for his decision.
My first choice was to stay and be committed to working through our problems together; Sam’s choice was to ask for time. Then I made another choice. A choice that would ultimately halt the need for any more choices. I decided I would end the relationship for him. And that is exactly what I did.
I chose aloha no.
