Finally It Has Happened to Me

The HL and I are a thing of the past.

I am glad of it. I am so, so sorry that he's not the man I need right now, and I have enough of a real attachment to him to want to get RE-attached to him, but I am not in love with him, and he's not in love with me. There is no motivation to fix it on my end, just a motivation to feel comfortable. But I realize that I need to be uncomfortable right now, that being comfortable isn't enough of a reason to let him back into my life in a personal way.

There are myriad reasons.

1. We don't have much in common. I like to eat, he never eats. He hates English, and that's what I teach. He doesn't read. He is a computer person. No shared foundation there.

2. I am not the right girl. I mean, if he actually said to me that my body temperature is too warm as to let him to get close to me physically, then how crazy about me can he be? Can you say "not at all?"

3. We have different values. While we have the same priorities about education and family, but what he can't help mattering to him are things I think are shallow. I place more emphasis on thinks he thinks are naive and idealistic. Both of us deserve someone in our lives who thinks the way we do. He needs a cool (!), beautiful woman who appreciates his aptitudes, and I need a man who thinks forever is actually possible and who sees the same strengths in me that I see, or who values the same things about me that I value.

Basically, he's not ready for marriage... or at least not to me, or else these little excuses wouldn't be real problems. The timing on my own side was really messed up as well. I wasn't ready to get involved and risk another "failure" when I met him, but I let it happen anyway as a confidence builder and exploration into what's out there after the divorce; I needed this relationship to work for a time at whatever cost and at whatever expense. So I muffled my own personality and inclinations to get along... and if the timing had been better, or we were both a little more enlightened or prepared for more than we are, it really might've worked... and the pettiness and small mindedness on both of our sides wouldn't be an issue. But it wasn't better, and we're not more enlighened, and we've gone as far as a romance right now as possible.

None of my friends... none of HIS friends, for that matter, seem either surprised or disappointed by this outcome. Mine are sorry, of course, and have extended the appropriate consolations. But in the immortal words of my friend D, "It wasn't like I ever thought you'd marry him or anything." And in the immortal words of the HL's cousin M, "Actually, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, given his track record."

So... I've already spend a couple of hours "socializing" with another man... L... and we shall become friends and hopefully not more for a while. This semester of graduate school promises to be the most daunting yet, and I think focusing on that priority will simplify my life immeasurably... as will reminding myself that I can control some of what happens to me, and I owe it to myself not to make the same mistakes.

So... my dear HL... I will miss you... I am grateful to you... and I am sad that you're not going to be an integral part of my life any more. I have little but wonderful things to say about you, and I wish you nothing but good. Maybe someday the right woman, the beautiful and candid woman you adore, will come into your life at the right time, and you can become the man I know you have inside you.

As for me, I need to grieve a little longer... but I am all right with that. Well, in fact.