Single at last!

[liv]

Well, it's taken me six years, but finally, I am not in any relationship and I have no prospect of being in any relationship. You might have thought that an ambition for singlehood would be easy to achieve, since it's pretty much the default state and plenty of people end up that way even though they're making serious effort to avoid being single. Not me. I've had very strange luck, and it's led to several really wonderful relationships, so wonderful that they overcame my basic dislike of that sort of thing.

And yes, I am going to get severely laughed at if I do end up getting together with someone, even more than I got laughed at the last three times this kind of thing happened. But I'm sufficiently confident that isn't going to happen this time to run the risk of humiliation by gloating about being single! Just in case anyone is confused about this, this is not a cue for someone to ask me out in order to prove me wrong. Much less a hint along the lines of, oh look, I'm lonely and available, someone please show some interest!

*deep breath*

The less positive side of this is that the way I got to be single was by bringing to a close my two-year relationship with lethargic_man. I'm posting this here mainly because I don't want to have to repeat the information any more times than necessary. I'm not miserable about it; we planned this more or less from the beginning, and I am very convinced that it was the right thing to do. So please, if you can possibly bear to refrain from expressing sympathy, I'd really appreciate not having to go through the explanation of why I'm not in the emotional state typically associated with breakups.

That doesn't mean I'm absolutely over the moon about this. I really, really like and admire and, yes, love lethargic_man, and I really, really liked going out with him. I may post to expand on that later, but the main point I want to make is that, just because I'm not looking for sympathy, you shouldn't assume that I'm celebrating either.

Comments

[liv]

I am frequently charmed by rysmiel's definitions of grown-up: they sometimes surprise me briefly, before I realize I agree with them.
You know, since I've started discussing this with you and rysmiel, I'm tending quite a lot towards this view myself.

The conventional way to approach your incompatible goals would, I think, have been either for one of you to initiate an immediate break-up as soon as you realized the incompatibility or for you to stretch things out as long as possible,
Yeah, that makes sense. I think our way was better than either of those though. If we'd split up straight away we'd have missed out on a lovely relationship. And I strongly suspect that letting the relationship go on indefinitely would have led to hurt.

I suppose the other convention we're breaking is that you're supposed to avoid all contact with, if not actively hate, someone you've ended a relationship with. That's also a convention that I think has very little going for it.

[redbird]

I think part of what I mean by grown-up in this context is the ability and willingness to make your own decisions about what makes sense--given who you are and what you want--rather than doing the conventional thing purely because it is the conventional thing. Probably most of us will sometimes want to do the conventional thing: conventions often exist for good reason.

I agree that avoiding one's exes is not an ethical imperative. Sometimes there may be good reason to do that, at least for a while, but there should be a reason.

Again, there's a difference between avoiding an ex because you know you can't be civil around them for a while, and doing so because your acquaintances assume you should. I have one ex who, well, for years I hoped I'd never see again--at this point, it's been long enough that I think I could handle it, but I certainly have no desire to see her, and will not seek her out. There's at least one other who I haven't seen in ages because we just drifted apart. I don't know how much we'd have to say to each other at this point--but if we do wind up in the same room sometime, I wouldn't mind finding out.

[liv]

think part of what I mean by grown-up in this context is the ability and willingness to make your own decisions about what makes sense
I can cope with that as that as definition. Old enough to think for yourself but also old enough to have got over the idea that the whole adult world exists to persecute you and that you must do whatever convention will disapprove of.

conventions often exist for good reason.
Indeed, as we've discussed in the past.

I agree that avoiding one's exes is not an ethical imperative.
Heh. I like phrasing it in such extreme terms!

Sometimes there may be good reason to do that
Oh, I don't deny that. I just feel it shouldn't be the default. Perhaps this attitude comes from working on the model of relationships that says you have a duty to stay together unless things become so utterly disastrously horrible that you probably would be refusing further contact once you got out. Whereas I work on the basis that a relationship is only worth doing if it's making the people involved happier than otherwise, which is a different baseline.

I have one ex who, well, for years I hoped I'd never see again
That's a pity; I'm sorry that you were in such a situation because I can only imagine that it must have been painful.

I've had one very difficult breakup, and at the time I suggested no contact for a few weeks because there was a lot of stuff we needed space to work through. Then a few weeks later came Christmas so I sent my ex a Christmas card. And he replied to that saying he was ok with email contact and starting to try to rebuild the friendship. Things were pretty satisfactory for a while, we were being quite tentative but we both cared about staying friends. We even saw eachother when we happened to be in the same town. Then completely out of the blue, he said he didn't want any more contact. I still don't know why, but it was about the most hurtful thing anyone's ever done to me. We're no longer formally Not Speaking now, but after two totally blank years there's too much ground to catch up to the point where we could be close. I deeply regret that.

There's at least one other who I haven't seen in ages because we just drifted apart.
That's definitely a likely outcome. Making friends with someone you've split up with can be quite a lot of effort, especially if you don't have any natural reason to see eachother casually (eg if you don't live nearby or move in the same circles.)