I remember spending several years single and playing the field. At first this was fun and exciting but after some time, I felt I was missing something or someone. I started to look around me and I noticed the friends I was hanging with were hooked up with someone. We didn’t hang out as much. I began to feel like a third wheel. They all seemed happy. For once in my life, I felt lonely. I was tired of coming home along after going out. I wanted someone to call my own. I was ready to settle down so I set out looking for that special person.
I finally found that special person, so I thought. At first it was love and bliss. We were so in love, we spent every minute we could together. What made it so bad; I fell for her and hard. There began a twenty year relationship.
We ended up moving together after a few months. This was a big mistake. About 2 years into the relationship tragedy struck. She left me for another woman. My heart had never felt so much pain. I had been hurt before, but this was brutal. I thought I had met my so-called “soul mate”. Yeah right, some soul mate. Over the next few years, she put me through one heart break after another. Through the years, I found myself becoming stronger and stronger. I gave everything in this relationship, my love, commitment, money most of all, all that time I put into it. For years I hung in there. I watched the kids grow up; I worked at a job for years helping support them. I watched grand kids grow up. Wow, how time flies by. You don’t realize it, until you find yourself standing there wondering, what am I doing here? How did I stay so long in a relationship that’s been full of chaos and drama? Stay with a woman who was sometimes so cold and selfish? We weren’t even compatible. We spent most of our days in silence. It was as though everything was routine, nothing exciting. We really had no connection. And to think, I wanted to marry this woman so, I thought.
One day after we were on our nineteenth year, I had to stop and ask myself some serious questions. Is this woman the one for me or have I just been forcing myself to be with her? I mean really, we had nothing in common. Almost every time we we’d break up, she would leave me and go to some other woman.
Twenty years, a long time to be with someone. The time had just rolled right by. Finally I said to myself, either stay in this relationship and try to make it work, or let go. At that point I realized that the years we spent meant nothing. They were just years. We argued all the time.
I realized all those years that I was the one doing most of the giving and I wasn’t getting the same. Sometimes that’s the case in relationships. Now it was my choice to stay in this relationship. At the time, I didn’t want to give up on my relationship so the years just kept going by and here we were still together. It never got better always worst. I had to ask myself, what I was getting out of this but years of just existing with her. If I left now, what would happen? Could I Live without her? Would it lead to her being in the arms of someone else? Would she hate me? I had a lot of questions but the main question I had, was I happy? There was really no connection, no compatibility.
Sometimes we just look at the years we have with a person. We have that feeling of having wasted so much time with someone. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is now.
What would happen if I leave? What would happen if I stayed? I realized it was all up to me. I finally decided that this was it. I knew things would not change so why stay? Just to add more years of pain and chaos. I decided that I wasn’t going to waste another year of my life trying. What could I lose by breaking away and starting a new life? Yes I was older and the years had weighed on me, but my life is not over so neither am I. I knew she would continue if I did, so it was time for me to make that decision. So I left, after twenty years.
We have been apart for several years now. Do I regret it? No I don’t regret it. It has made me stronger and wiser when making decisions in my other relationships.
The years are just years. I have learned a lot about myself and how I would treat my new mate. I have learned to be more patient, self-controlled, and understanding. I have also learned how I wanted to be treated by my mate. So don’t get caught in the years. I chalk them up as a learning experience, a long one.
