Reconciliation

Given my recent attempts to analyze and understand my lack of success when it comes to relationships, I've been thinking lately about the first guy I ever seriously dated. I was never really in a relationship until my freshman year of college (oh great and wise sage Gabe credits my late blooming with my current difficulties, but I'm not sure I buy that). That relationship lasted until the middle of my junior year. For awhile, we were all set to get married. Despite my history of dating jerks, this guy didn't fall into that category. He's a good guy. But I was young, and this was my first relationship, and I realized one day that I'd set this path for the rest of my life that I wasn't really ready to commit to yet.

It was a hard decision for me to make, because I still loved this guy, but I broke up with him. I knew I needed to figure out on my own who I was. But a lot of what I was feeling I really couldn't put into words yet (time gives you amazing clarity), and so I never really did a good job at helping him understand why I wanted to end things. I tried to stay friends with him, but it just seemed like that hurt him worse. I had told him once when we were dating that if we ever hit rough times, I would fight to keep him in my life, so when it was I that decided to leave, he tried the same thing. But the harder he fought, the harder I pulled away. And it seemed to hurt him so much to just be friends, I eventually put up a wall and shut him out. It wasn't what I wanted, but I thought it would be easier for him in the long run.

I didn't want to hurt him, and I didn't really have a choice, because if I'd stayed, I would have always resented him, and it would have still ended badly, just later. But I still have always felt bad for hurting him the way I did. Every once in awhile, I see him online. We say hi, how are you, but that's about it. Tonight I saw him online, though, and decided that we've had enough time and distance to talk about things, make amends. I asked him how he sees our relationship, looking back....he said he feels like if he hadn't been selfish, maybe we would have made it. I told him that the whole thing didn't have anything to do with anything he had or hadn't done, and that he was the one guy I've had anything serious with that I don't look back and think, what an asshole. I think tonight he finally understood that it really wasn't him, it was me.

And then he told me that the thing that bothered him the most was that he'd lost his best friend, and I realized how selfish I've been to wait so long to try and make things right. I really should have seen that sooner; after all, I've had something similar happen to me, and I know how much it hurts. About six months after this guy and I broke up, I started casually seeing another guy who was a good friend of mine. We were never officially a couple, and, to be honest, I didn't think we had much of a future after college, but I thought what we had at the moment was pretty special--until I found out that he was in a relationship with someone else, and I was the other woman. The hardest thing was that I'd trusted him to be upfront with me, because he was my friend. If he'd said he wanted to date other people, I would have been okay with it, because I was never under the impression that we were exclusive. But the other girl he was dating was under that impression, and he involved me in betraying her without my knowing it, and, in so doing, betrayed me.

For three years after that, we were no longer friends. I'd see photos of him when I glanced through my college yearbook and feel a little something missing, because I'd lost a friend. Then at homecoming this year, I ran into him. I was ready to mend fences, and he came up to me and told me that he'd owed me an apology for three years, and it had been eating him up for three years, but he hadn't known how to get in touch with me. That was all I needed.

I don't stay in touch with him now, but I don't feel a loss when I see a photo of him. I just get a good feeling, because I can say, "That's my friend." As I told him that night, I feel like I got a piece of my life back.

So why did I wait so long to make things right with my first love? Why did I leave him with a hole in his life for so long? I don't know. But like I said, time brings clarity, and with it, forgiveness. If my friend had tried to apologize (and he sort of did) three years ago, I wouldn't have been ready to hear it. So maybe I just didn't know when my ex-boyfriend would be ready to hear it.

I'm sure I waited longer than I should have. But hopefully now, when he looks at photos of me, he can say, "That's my friend."