Nearly two decades ago, I went through one of my most painful breakups, my first really painful breakup. At the time, I was in grad school and had been in a very intense and complicated, mostly long-distance, more-than-platonic relationship with a guy I loved very deeply and who sincerely loved me back. He was very unhappy in his job and even disliked the city where he lived at the time while really liked the city where I was going to grad school. We were both of us tired of the long-distance aspect that weighed on our relationship but I had really reached a breaking point: I just couldn’t do the long-distance anymore, and told him so. I basically gave him an ultimatum, which on paper he also found extremely reasonable: that he move to the city where I was going to grad school and find himself a new job there (which he could have done pretty easily, given the field he was in). For several months, I waited, as he tried to figure things out, to try and make it work. In the end, though, as he himself admitted, he wasn’t able to muster the courage to take the leap and move to be geographically closer to me. So I ended the relationship.
Of course, I was devastated by the loss because we truly loved each other and had a very deep emotional & intellectual connection. For me, though, there was also an additional level, or flavor, to the pain: I felt that he didn’t love, or care about, me enough to find the courage, enough to take the leap, despite my outstretched hand. He wouldn’t have been leaping into the void: he would have had to take a leap, or step, to enable the continuation & growth of our relationship. His incapacity to do so felt like a rejection to me.
Last night, I finally met up with Jack to follow up on the complicated conversation we had three & a half weeks ago. And the bottom line was that he is still in the toxic, monogamous relationship with that woman, feeling unhappy and trapped in it but unable to walk away from it/her; but his feelings and desires for me are also unchanged, beyond platonic, and his wishes would be for a deep “friendship with benefits” along lines that are very similar to what I’d like. The pain I’m feeling right now around Jack is still very raw and somewhat confused in its layers. But one layer is similar to how I felt with my ex nearly two decades ago: a sense of rejection, of not being loved or important enough for someone to take a leap despite my outstretched hand. Similarly to my ex almost two decades ago, I’m not asking Jack to take a leap into the void, to leave everything behind: I’m offering him a relationship with me, a relationship that he, too, apparently would like but doesn’t have the courage to go for. That hurts terribly. It’s painful and frustrating and disappointing. And it feels like the waste of a wonderful opportunity.
I can empathize with Jack’s difficulty in leaving the woman he’s been together with for over three years, despite having been unhappy with her, by his own admission, for over two & a half years. I was in a similar situation with my ex in Europe before taking my leap from Barcelona to California a decade ago. It was hard and it took me a long time to get to the point where I was ready to go. But in the end, I went, I took the leap. And mine was a huge leap of faith into the unknown. I understand, and can even empathize with the fact, that we often stay in a situation even if it makes us terribly unhappy just because it’s familiar, it’s known, and as such more bearable than the unknown. I can understand Jack when he says that the situation with me — a close friendship with benefits — feels like an unknown to him because it would be completely new to him: first time with another man, first time in a consensually/ethically non-monogamous relationship, first time in a serious friendship with benefits with a climbing buddy. I get it. But still, the unknowns wouldn’t be as great as the ones I faced a decade ago when I left my whole life behind to start over in California. At the time, I only had a dream, a vague idea of what life could be like in California, the force of desperation from the unhappy life I was leading, hope, and U.S. citizenship. When I moved a decade ago, I had no job waiting for me in California, no friends there, no place to live other that the AirBnb I had booked online. Nothing. Only my dreams. I was sad, I was scared, I was broken-hearted and lonely. I cried for most of the flight from London to San Diego. But I did it. I found the courage and took the leap. Pretty much a leap into the void. Jack would be “leaping” from a miserable relationship that is familiar to him to an “augmented friendship” with someone he knows and trusts and who’s already shown him availability & love (me). How much courage does that really take?
I’m trying to be compassionate and empathetic, I’m trying to remind myself that courage is different for each of us, so to a certain extent courage is subjective. But I also need to remind myself that my level of courage is often higher, stronger, more determined than that of many other people. To me, their incapacity to muster the courage to “choose me” feels like rejection. But probably it’s just that their courage, or their willingness to push their comfort zone, is smaller than mine.
It’s frustrating and painful because I’m sure that Jack & I could have a lovely friendship with benefits — we desire and imagine the evolution of our relationship along very similar lines — but it’s not going anywhere because he cannot get himself out of a swamp.
The Little Prince and the Fox 