“Just friends”
Life moves on, and so must I.
In the past few weeks, while Andrea and I have become better friends than we were before the breakup, I have come to the conclusion (actually, around July 21) that I’ve moved on from our romance. In truth, while I admit the possibility (as all things are possible) of renewed interest one or ten years from now, I don’t expect it. I still love her, and still find her attractive, but I don’t want a relationship. While the first week “apart” was transformative, what with dropping our expectations of each other and working to eliminate all the negative aspects of our relationship, I keep discovering that the stuff I didn’t enjoy is still there - and it’s not all that hard to bring it to the surface.
Another part of what I realized was that, in the two weeks before we broke up, I was working on falling back in love with her. I, too, had already left the relationship. Sure, I was working on getting back into it, and I thought I was discovering depths to the relationship of which I’d been unaware - depths of the sort I would want to tell the whole world about - but it’s much easier to discover disinterest from a position of interest-being-restored than it is from a position of being head-over-heels in love. I think that’s part of why my grieving process has been so easy this time.
At the same time, as I’ve been getting clearer about the end of that relationship and centering into myself, I have been developing a number of new friendships, both online and off, with people whom I think might be among my best friends for several years to come. It came as no surprise to a good friend of mine that I’m saying I want to take time to reconnect with myself and my friends as I go forward. Nor was it surprising for this friend to hear that among these friends there are some women in whom I see future romantic potential. It seems my friends and family have observed a trend in me (which I, too, have seen), of throwing myself headlong into newfound romance. “Nothing wrong with that,” they say, “though it is likely to produce different results than other approaches.”
In the event that one of these new friends is reading this and wondering if I’ve got my eye on her - geez, I don’t actually know what to say about that. What I feel I need most right now from my friends is to simply share the things we enjoy in life. If something more develops, then so be it. What I’ve observed in life is that spending time together naturally leads to the deepening of relationships, it does so all the more enjoyably if it isn’t rushed, and such depth can be directed by the interests (or disinterest) of all involved. I commit to honoring and enjoying the natural flow of closeness and space in all my relationships.
I don’t promise to post regular updates. If you want the latest, give me a call (971-404-7294) and arrange a time to hang out.