The lesser of two evils

For seven years, from 2008/2009 to 2015/2016, I was together with someone who was my sexual, “romantic”, and nesting partner. 

We met in grad school through our common group of friends and got together the last year of our PhD. We moved in together after about a year of being sexually involved with each other and moved to Germany together for our first postdoc. I had received two postdoc offers from research groups in Singapore and one from a national lab in Washington D.C. — both places where I had really wanted to go — and one from a place in Germany. I chose Germany despite not really liking the city where I was going to live: that decision wasn’t based only on the fact that I liked the research topics I’d be working on; I chose Germany also because that was the only place where my partner had received a postdoc offer, too, and we wanted to move & live together. 

I have often looked back upon that decision as a mistake, the only regret in my life. The first couple of years of the relationship with that sexual/romantic/nesting partner were wonderful: I was really happy with him, I thought I had found “the man of my life”, so I ignored the red flags and made that decision for my postdoc. And then, even when things started going badly and got worse over the other five years of our relationship, I tried everything I could to “make things work” between us. I tried so hard. 

Eventually, I left. In January 2016, I moved to California by myself, leaving that partner and most of my life from that time behind me. I had had enough and my dreams, which had always been there and included moving to California, prevailed over the desire of having a “life partner”. 

I have never regretted my choice of leaving, of leaving him. It was one of the best decisions of my life. But it was also one of the hardest. I remember sobbing for several hours at the beginning of the flight that was taking me from London to San Diego. 

In that moment, I finally chose me — my freedom, my well-being, my dreams — over what was or had become a toxic relationship. I will never regret that decision, but now I will also stop regretting the years I spent with that man and the efforts I made to try to make that relationship work. I will stop regretting those years and those efforts with him because now I know, now I understand how much I really wanted that relationship to work. 

That hadn’t been my first sexual-nesting relationship. It was actually my third. I ended each of those relationships when I realized they weren’t what I needed and there is no doubt that a lot of the reasons why, or ways in which, those relationships weren’t “what I needed” was because of the cis-hetero-amato-normative conditioning I had received that led me (us) to believe there was only one, or very few, way(s) of having a “life partner” — which now I know is untrue. 

But now I also know something else. 

Last weekend, I spent four days with my French buddy who moved back to California from Colorado. He hosted me at his place and I was his first visitor since he moved back there three months ago. We did the trail race together last Sunday and spent the most part of the weekend & all four evenings together. We spent hours on end together, like we had never done before. We went running together, did a race together; we went out for walks and dinners and ice-cream and brunches together; we went to an Irish pub together with another French coworker of his to watch the final soccer game of the Champion’s League (such a European thing to do!); we went out to the movies together and relaxed on the couch to watch shows & documentaries together; we cooked meals together and took turns doing the dishes. We planned our four days together, around each other’s schedules and needs. For four days we were, in some way, “nesting partners”. 

Those days with him were some of the happiest days I’ve had recently and have had in a long time. I had a similar feeling of happiness and belonging on the camping/climbing trip to Moab with a group of friends for my French buddy’s birthday in May and partly also when visiting my friend in Durango in April.

What these recent trips, and in particular the days spent in California last weekend, have helped me to see as clear as day is that I would really want (a) nesting partner(s) and probably would even need that type of relationship in my life: I simply am happier and more functional when I share my life/days intentionally with a loved one. 

It is these recent trips, the feelings I had during those days spent with my French buddy in California, that have finally erased the regret I felt around staying so many years in a relationship that didn’t work after grad school, the regret I felt around choosing Germany over Singapore to be with that guy. It might have been a “mistake”, because he was not the right person for me (nor I for him), but it was not wrong, because I had really wanted that relationship, because I need (a) “life partner(s)” of some sort. I don’t know exactly what form of “life partnership” I would want & need, e.g. if I’d like it to be “nesting” in the sense of actually living together in the same house or not, whether I’d want to have the nesting & sexual aspects from the same person or different people (probably different), whether I’d want some form of polycule and, if so, what type… 

But what I do know is that, when in 2016 I chose myself — my freedom, my well-being, my dreams — over that toxic relationship, I chose the lesser of two evils: I chose to be alone rather than with the wrong person. But that does not mean that I am happy alone: that just means that I needed to get out of that situation and be alone then, to save myself then. It was survival, and that survival isn’t brining me happiness anymore.