Clearing my mind

[ejn29]

I'm not sure what I'm expecting right now but I felt like writing (if anything I can come back and read this later to see where my head was!). This is my first post, so I apologize for the length but here it goes. *It's late so sorry if I'm a bit redundant or don't make too much sense

 

I had been dating my now ex (which is hard to say, since this happened a few hours ago) for over a year. The first part of the relationship was great, it was fun, exciting, there is a great chemistry and we had started talking about a future together. Due to medical reasons (nothing life threatening but still needing attention), plus work stresses/schedules/bills/etc; things in the relationship began feeling strained and forced in order to make things work over the last couple of months and in the end the relationship seemed to take a back seat to everything else.

 

Initially she suggested a break/time apart but without breaking up, no real time frame other than saying it wouldn't be more than a month or two of stepping back. Basically she was looking to stabilize her life: deal with the health issues and waiting for the workload to lighten first before we attempted to work on things. At first I was ok with it because it was giving me more time to attend to situations I needed to take care of in my life including family, friends, work and such (still thinking it'd just be a short period of time before we'd be able to refocus on the positives and work on addressing the relationship). We hadn't seen each other in a few weeks even though we don't live too far from each other, but we were both still sending texts and calling (a couple of times a week). At some point by the end of this third week I started feeling the emotional gap grow between us even more and felt like I had to say something because by nature I like to address things right away once the problem is figured out and not put it off whether by ignoring it or in this case taking a break. When we met up tonight I told her that there's certain things that I was needing from the relationship which I knew she couldn't give until she felt things were back in order first. BUT that continuing the break wasn't going to work for me because it left things up in the air indefinitely and that it'd be hard to just pick up pretending we hadn't been drifting apart not only in the previous two months but even more so during the 3 week break so far. It was feeling like we were just disagreeing too much, she's wanting to sort other areas first and I was wanting to work on the relationship first. So naturally it led to some arguing.

 

We both know that we love and want only the best for each other and for the relationship in the long run, which made it hard for me to step back and realize that we needed to break up before we damaged things further. We were both wanting to focus and fix different areas, without getting to the root of the problem in the first place. The situation boiled down to the fact that by focusing on all of the other issues in our lives we had stopped communicating as well as we had in the beginning, we weren't enjoying the relationship fully and most importantly weren't developing a close friendship. Basically we were forcing a relationship to exist when some of the other key elements besides love and trust were missing (communication, fun, laughter, friendship, intimacy). In the end we agreed that we need to start fresh and become friends again and then re evaluate where things stood once our lives got a little more under control.

 

So now, realizing that we are broken up is hard because I know it's the right thing to do, but going from talking about long term plans to starting from friends again seems like a difficult transition. I don't love her any less and it's not a switch that can be turned on and off. But I know that for there to be a chance at getting back together we need to try and re-find that spark and enjoyment that brought us together in the first place. Guess I would just like to see what people think. Do you guys think it's possible to do? To re-start things? Has anyone tried this? Tips, advice, opinions, anything. It'd be great to hear what others have to say. Because even though we're both willing to try this and hope it works for the best, there's always a possibility it won't since there's so many variables.

 

-jason