the "relationship"

Apparently I have a long lost friend who is an "avid reader" of this here blog. This someone, who chooses to remain anonymous (some friend...), has requested more specifics on the past relationship that I mention from time to time so that they can better understand where I am coming from in the things I write. So, as there may be more than just this one person out there in the same darkness about this area of my life...I have decided to try to briefly outline said past relationship. And I will try to be brief.

Since this story will involve my ex and I really would rather avoid using that name as much as possible right now, I will give her a new name. We shall refer to her as Sue. I can't really think of any Sue's that I know, so this will be a good name for her. And it rhymes with poo. Just a bonus.

I met Sue, to the best of my recollection, in early June of 2004. I was still living in FL at the time. She was just in town to work for the '04 presidential election. (I did get to shake W's hand because of her, which was kinda cool) Anyway, I met her through a roommate I had at the time. We started dating in mid-August. August 14th actually. (I have a freakish memory sometimes) She moved to Georgia after the election, which was in November.

I had been feeling for a while that I needed to move out of FL. So, at the beginning of April in '05, I moved to Mississippi. She got a job in D.C. and moved up there the weekend after I moved to MS. We had continued to "date", how you can do that when you live hundreds of miles apart I have yet to discover, during this whole time. We did break up at the beginning of January of '05. It was actually the evening of Jan 1st, so right at the beginning of Jan. (there goes that freakish memory agian) But the breakup only ended up lasting a few days, or a month or so. Not exactly sure on this fact. We talked on the phone and decided that we should give it another try, but she wanted to actually talk face to face before anything was official. But when I finally had a chance to go see Sue, I think it was in Feb, we never had a talk and everything just seemed like it was back to normal.

I didn't end up staying in Mississippi very long. Got a call on Memorial Day weekend from a guy I knew in Denver offering me a job. So I decided to move. Again. And Sue encouraged me to move even farther away from where she was. So, the plan was for me to meet her in Georgia, where her parents lived, for their annual 4th of July bash, spend the weekend there, and then go back to MS, pack up my stuff and move to CO. Had a blast in GA for the 4th. Drove back to MS late at night the day after the 4th. Slept in, went and picked up the U-Haul trilor, packed all my stuff, the MS friends threw me a surprise going-away party, and then I called Sue before I went to sleep. That was the night she decided to tell me that she wanted to marry me. This was good news at the time, because I had decided that I wanted to marry her quite a while before that. But she had always been a more career focused person and had no desire to get married. (I think our Jan break up had something to do with this fact)

So, I moved to CO and started working. After a couple of months I noticed that I had managed to get into a little worse debt while I was living in MS that I thought I had. I had no debt before I moved there, other than a little money I still owed my dad from college. But wages are low in MS, and moving (twice) is not cheap. And so I was in debt. So I told Sue this and we decided that we wouldn't get married until I had paid that all off. Then, a few months after that, she changed her mind and decided she just wanted to get married, debt or no debt. And she wanted a fall wedding, which meant that it would be about a year from the time we were having this conversation. So, given the fact that I was in debt, I went and bought a ring at the end of November. From Tiffany&Co. Not the bast place to buy a ring when you have no money. But I figured out a way that I thought would work to pay for it and so I got it. Proposed to her in D.C. on Dec 9th, I believe. Kinda a sucky proposal, but she was surprised and that is very important to her, and she said yes. Much excitement.

Sue started planning the wedding. Always complaining about how hard it was to plan a wedding that was going to be in a different place than where she was living at the time. Always stressing about everything that had to do with it. Went and bought a dress in D.C. for it, probably about a month after we were engaged. Managed to find the perfect place to have the ceremony and reception. Picked out bride's maid dresses. Really expensive ones. Ordered a cake. Sent out "Save the dates". (they were magnetic and I think my mom was the lsat person I knew to take it off the fridge...)

We talked about where we wanted to live after we got married. Decided on Denver. She looked for jobs out here. Couldn't find anything. We talked about it some more. She said she thought it would be a better idea to move to GA, by her parents. I said that I would probably be ok with this, but lets both think about it for a few days and talk and pray about it some more before we decided. I hear from either her sister or best friend the NEXT FRIGGIN DAY that we were going to be living in GA. And I was just like, Oh really. And I talked to Sue about it that night and she just gave me some story, and for the sake of not fighting with her, I just decided to let it go and just move to GA. (not how I should have handled the situation)

She moved to GA in April. Wedding had been set for Sept 23rd. (yes, like this coming Saturday I was supposed to be getting married) I said that I thought I could be out there soon, but it would be July at the latest. I thought. Nothing definite. Cause now that I actually have to pay for the ring I bought, there is NO money left to move again.

Meanwhile... As I mentioned, she had been stressing out over the wedding. Never once asked me if I wanted to have any input. And whenever she would be talking to me about it and I decided to try to give her an opinion about anything, she would tell me that I was treating her like she wass stupid and just trying to be mean. Hmm. So after having this happen several times, I quit saying anything at all about the wedding.

Then she moves back home and starts stressing about finding a job there. And the wedding. Fun times. And she started to talk to me less. I would try to call her and she would be "watching tv can I call you later?" This, apparently, was how she spent time bonding with her parents. Guess that is more important than trying to communicate with the person you are planning on getting married to in a few months. Then after a while, she started harping on how she "needed" (this was one of my pet peeves about her was that she would always tell me all these things she "needed" from me) to have more than a 15 minute conversation with me before I went to sleep every night.

Then one fine Monday night sometime in June, I wass talking to Sue on the phone on the way to my softball game. Sounded like she was on the verge of busting up crying any minute, but she wass just going on and on with the small talk, so I just went with it and tried to get off the phone before the flood started so I could play good and just deal with whatever it was after the game. (I know, a little insensitive, but she was the one holding it in) No good. Still hadn't figured out how to just say, gotta go, and she busts out with, "Do you love me? I don't feel like I can trust you anymore." That was a nice thing to hear; for no reason at all.

Now we come to the really fun part of the story of me and Sue.

She told me the reason she was wondering this was because I wasn't "sharing" with her anymore. I had been keeping all my thoughts to myself. For those of you who know me, I am not the best communicator. You know this. I worked very very hard on that with Sue. I am a lot better than I used to be. And she would admit this fact any time that it was brought up. And admittedly, I probably hadn't been sharing as much with her. But she had come pretty close to not ever giving me time to talk to her and when we did talk she was not ever sharing anythhing with me. I had to drag any information out of her. But when she just busted out at me with these questions about whether I still loved her...lets just say it kinda sent me into a dark place. That was a Monday and I didn't, couldn't, talk to her until Saturday night. I did send her a response to an e-mail she sent me sometime in the middle of the week and told her all of the things that had been bothering me the last few months that I had either just started to notice or had just figured out that week, after I finally started really thinking about things. We talked for a long time that Saturday night. And she managed to get mad at me when I had to go, at 3 or 4 in the morning, because my cell battery was dead and I had to stand with one foot on my bed and the other foot on a table in my room to get a signal with the other cell phone I had.

So we talked and argued about things for a couple of weeks. During which time, pretty much from the first conversation we had that Saturday night, she waffled back and forth. She would say that she still loved me more every day than she did the day before, and then in almost the same sentence she would say that she just couldn't "do this" (whatever "this" was) anymore and just had to take her heart back from me. But she still wanted to get married now. (I forgot to mention that in one of the e-mails I sent her, prob on that saturday, said that I wanted to postpone the wedding) Seriously, at one point I told her point blank, that after what she had said to me I couldn't say that I still loved her the same way I used to, and the next thing she said was something about still getting married. That just totally confused the junk out of me. And there were more instances of this waffleing of hers. So pretty much all I could gather for sure from what Sue was saying was that we were over. But she wouldn't say it, cause she didn't want us to be over. But she couldn't "do this" anymore. But lets still get married in September.

So this all went on for probably about two weeks. We talked to each other about it, I know I talked to several other people about it, including one of her uncles. She kept giving me lists of things she "needed" from me still. After one of the lists I told her I needed to think about it and talk to her later. So I thought about it all and called her the next night. I told her I can do this and this and this. Pretty much said I would do everything she had asked me to. She comes back with "I need to think about it." And this leaves me thinking, "what does she need to go think about? She was the one who gave me the list of things that I just bent over backwards to agree to." So I call her the next night. We go through all the small talk crap that she always had to start with and then I ask her what she was thinking. And she says "I don't know. What are you thinking?" At this point I had had about enough of this crap and told her staight up that she was the one who had said that she needed to be thinking about things, I had already told her what I thought. She really didn't have much to say after that, so that was that nice short conversation for that night.

I think it was the next night that everything was ended. Can't remember exactly how that conversation went, but somewhere at the end of it she was saying stuff and I said something along the lines of that she wasn't leaving me anything but to say goodbye cause it was all over. So I said goodbye and it was over.

Course, she still has the ring at this point and is hundreds of miles away from me. So I think about it and ask a lot of people how long I should wait for the ring to show up before I say anything to her about it. Then 2 weeks after we broke up I get a call from her. Wasn't in a place where I could answer. She called again. Right away. So I turned my ringer off. Then she sends me a text message saying, "Tried calling you, couldn't get through. Call me when you get this." That was all it said. So I called her the next day when I had a minute to actually talk. She says that she is on a plane, just landed. I ask her where she was getting back from. She says Denver. This makes the thoughts that I had about maybe being ready to talk to her go running from my mind faster than greased pig down a slip-n-slide. Guess she had been up in WY for something and at least had a long layover in Denver that she had maybe wanted to at least meet me and talk for a little bit. But she never told me this. So I was not happy at all. Couple of days later I send her an e-mail. Say that I don't think I am ready to talk to her yet cause I know I'll say something that I'll probably regret at some point, and also asked her when she was planning on sending the ring back. She tries to call me like an hour later. I don't answer, cause I just told her that I can't talk to her. Then, about a week after that, I get an e-mail from Sue's best friend. Sue's friend tells me that I "need to be a man and cut my loses, (I) wasn't the only one who had lost finacially through this situation." Let's just say that this sent me into a place where I have only been on very rare occasions before in my life, and I really pray that I will never find myself again. But instead of doing the recommended thing of calming down before sending and e-mail, I wrote and sent one. And copied Sue on it.

I had also been scolded by the friend about my lack of communication with Sue. And, as I sent the "nice" e-mail on a Wednesday night and still hadn't heard anything by that Friday, I said to myself "she wants to talk; I'll call her up and let her talk." So, we had a nice 2 hour conversation towards the end of which I asked her about the ring. She told me that she thought it was "only fair" that her parents got to keep it and get any money from it because they had spent so much money on the wedding already. I told her that "I was very sorry that her parents had spent so much and couldn't really get much of it back, cause I know it was a lot of money, but I did not ask your parents to spend a dime. It was their choice, and yours; I was never even asked about a single detail of the wedding." I said a little more than this, and she disagreed with some of the things I said, and I tried to remind her of what actually happened, which she still wouldn't agree with. But after I got done saying what I said, she had absolutely nothing to say. She was silent. I waited about five minutes and said "so" and she said, "I already told you how I feel about it" and then we "talked" about it for a couple more minutes. And then she was silent again. Couldn't ever actually back up what she was saying. So I asked her if she was done talking and she said yes so I said I was going to go and she said that that would be a good idea. So I hung up.

Next afternoon I get a call. It's her daddy. He tells me that as soon as his wife gets home later that week they would put the ring in a box and mail it to me. I say thank you. Then he tells me never to contact Sue again. I say ok. He hangs up. 18 second "conversation". Then 2 and a half weeks later the ring finally shows up.

And that is the end of that. I did, just recently, break the "don't contact Sue again" saction and sent a one-line e-mail apologizing for sorta laughing at her. Cause in our last conversation she started to go throught a whole rant again about something and she was saying the exact, almost word-for-word thing to me that she had tried to sell me a couple of weeks before and I just didn't know how else to react other than to chuckle. And looking back I probably shouldn't have laughed at her so I just wanted to let her know I was sorry. Haven't heard anything back. Didn't really expect to.

But it's all over now. And I have been suprisingly quite happy since.

And this is why I had been trying to avoid going into too much detail about this in this format, cause trust me, this IS the short version. So, to all of you who already have lived through this with me once, I am sorry. Again. To "avid reader", this better be worth getting at least a name out of you! Even if it is just for the fact that I stayed up till quarter to 2 in the a.m. to type this all up!