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When I told her Id split with my ex three years earlier, her eyes met mine.
Olivia Anakwe for BLVD, Mary Fix / Gallery Stock
Will it ever get better?
I promised her it would.
I met M two and a half years after my nine-yearmarriage ended.
He was tall, handsome, and insufferableexactly my bang out.
He looks famous, a friend responded when I showed her a picture.
He is a musician, I said, as if that explained it.
Id gone out of my way to introduce myself.
Once a week, wed go out to eat, talk, then have sex for hours.
Wed originally been on the same page about keeping things casual and not rushing into anything.
I liked that he didnt demand too much of me.
I had a day job and wrote books in my spare time, a pursuit that could feel all-consuming.
And yet, I didnt write at all while I was seeing himI was too distracted.
It was on a ski trip in April that I noticed I wanted more.
I wasnt trying to be funny or sexy or cool, just me.
Though he had immediately hearted it, I felt exposed.
What was behind this vulnerable feeling?
Like always, he listened.
We talked about our past experiences navigating relationships as divorced people without kids.
He agreed to think about what he wanted.
We had sex twice that night, then twice more in the morning.
The yogurt and granola hed fixed me for breakfast curdled in my stomach.
Waiting to hear from him that weekend, a knot grew in my stomach.
I started bargaining with myself.
Maybe I could be okay with a superficialsituation-ship, if it meant holding on to the euphoria of myinfatuation?
On Monday, Memorial Day, he texted to see if I wanted to go out Wednesday.
I was uneasy, but his tone seemed to suggest otherwise.
Definitely not, she said.
I put on makeup that night and met him at a restaurant in Manhattan.
He bought me dinner at the bar.
There was a mirror behind it, where he never met my gaze.
A hot sting of humiliation flooded over me.
He cocked his head to one side, then said, Define feelings.
I didnt let myself cry until I got home.
The next morning, I woke up in shock.
How had I been so blindsided?
How could losing something that had never been that serious feel so terrible?
I began googling to determine what could possibly be wrong with him.
I made an urgent appointment with my therapist.
Interesting, she said as I sobbed.
It didnt seem like you were that invested in this.
Maybe youre just highly sensitive.
If I were the problem, I reasoned, I could also be the solution.
Self-help had never appealed to me; my preferred nonfiction genre was literary memoir.
So I listened to hours of positive self-talk, which helped me reframe the situation.
I had not lost anything.
Id gained an opportunity for self-transformation, or so the books told me.
They did, however, help me excavate my dysfunctional relationship patterns.
My boundaries were apparently malfunctioning; I was supposed to be filtering out the duds sooner.
Instead, I ended up with a series of unsatisfying, unhealthy, and sometimes emotionally abusive relationships.
But I still had no idea how to fix the problem.
Dried-up cicada corpses were strewn aboutthe aftermath of an early summer orgy.
I know, I said.
On many levels, this more recent breakup was so much easierI wasnt losing a life partner.
By dry July, I was starting to feel better.
Voluntarily celibate, Id put most of my wine budget into barre classes.
My calves looked amazing, plus I was meditating.
Then, I scanned the map like a murder wall.
I needed to spend more time alone.
I always believed they would.
And now that they had, I deserved the chance to enjoy it.
