Love is unconditional…

…relationships are not.

 

I would definitely not consider myself to be a conformist;

Abide by the rules? Yes.

Conformist? Never.

I was never the girl who fantasised about getting married. I didn’t plan my kids names and I certainly didn’t dream about a ‘Knight in shining armour’ coming to sweep me off my feet.

I didn’t give it a second thought when people would talk about their future husband and the perfect wedding that they would have, I just assumed that eventually I would get excited about these things. I didn’t.

Planning a wedding does not fill me with joy, wedding dress shopping is by far the most boring, monotonous task I have ever taken part in (sorry Gayle).

As much as I understand the feelings of wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone, (I have experienced these feelings, I’m not dead inside), I just don’t think you have to get married in order to do this.

Relationships don’t have to be forever and in many, many circumstances they won’t be. This should not be viewed as a failure.

I have relationships with people that I know will last forever, I have some that I know will end, they will run their course and myself and that other person will have gained something from it, we’ll have grown and changed and that’s perfectly acceptable.

There isn’t a rule in life that says you have to find one partner and be with that partner forever. The only place you will find those types of “rules” are in religion and that’s a whole other discussion.

To me, in my opinion, relationships have a big, giant fundamental flaw.

People.

Humans are fickle, unpredictable and emotionally complicated.

Human emotions = giant flaws

 

I have made statements in the past regarding relationships and how they shouldn’t be hard work. And I still firmly believe that. Maybe people think I’ve just given up too easily and I should wear myself out to the point of exhaustion and resentment trying to save this relationship.

Why?

So that we can end up right back in this same situation or worse in 3, 6 or 12 months time?

Some people would say I’m just afraid of commitment and that bugs me.

What does that even mean?

For the last 5 years I have been fully committed to the same man. I have loved, adored and completely given myself to him, but because that won’t be the case for the rest of our lives that means there is something wrong with me?

Bullshit.

Are we viewed as failures because we don’t carry on regardless? You’re not a f**king saint just because you stay married forever. You’re not eligible for greatness just because you’ve been together for 20 years.

(This is not a ‘married people bashing’. I know and love many married people. Please don’t start with the keyboard warrior crap. I know there are lots of people who are genuinely happily married and that is great. I love that, I’m happy for you.)

 

It’s not an achievement to stay in a relationship, you don’t gain XP for it, there isn’t a chart waiting for you filled with gold stars (well there might be but so what.)

Maybe some people will think of me as being selfish, I don’t really care because, yes I suppose I am being selfish but in these situations you kind of have to be. My mental health and happiness is more important to me than achieving level 50 in the relationship game or worrying what social traditions I may have broken.

 

I know that Chris and I were happy as single people, we’ve told each other this in past conversations (maybe that was a sign) and I always thought that when you achieved happiness alone you were ready to invite someone else in to your life to be happy with together. And as much as this makes sense it also doesn’t. How irresponsible of us, why ruin the contentment that you’ve probably fought for years to find?

I do wish that I could travel back in time knowing what I know now and force my way in to a friendship with him because he is one of my best friends and I really don’t want to lose that.

I may well have made the biggest mistake of my life. I might realise in 40 years time that I found and gave away the love of my life. Then again, I might not. Either way it was my realisation that I wasn’t happy and my decision to end the relationship.

We have also discussed, at length, how neither of us had actually been happy for quite some time, stupidity and stubbornness are major downfalls here. I’m not going to go in to detail of our discussion because although I am obviously sharing something very private, I do actually have a limit.

I know to some people it may seem odd that I am publicly writing this and you may not agree and it really isn’t an easy thing to do but this is how I vent and process things. This is a type of therapy to me.

I want people to know that this decision was not taken lightly. I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide,

“Right, well that’s enough now”

I am aware of how painful this decision has been, I was, after all, the one making it and it has caused severe heartache and has been deeply hurtful, for both of us.

Chris is by far the nicest person I have ever known. He never fails in cheering me up, even now. We’re strangely closer now than we’ve ever been and as much as it’s a terrible cliche, I do hope that we will remain friends, we will be the exception to the rule because I cannot imagine him being absent from my life. I genuinely never dreamed that this would be happening.

This whole process whilst being severely traumatic and devastating has also been very liberating for me because it has brought me the realisation that I don’t want or even need to be in a relationship. Many of you will read this and be thinking ,

“Well of course you don’t right now, it’s still so raw”,

but for anyone who knows Chris, they will know that he’s pretty damn near perfect and if I can’t remain happy with him then it’s going to be almost impossible for that to ever happen with anyone else. It would have to be some pretty bloody incredible person and I’m fairly certain that they don’t exist and that’s completely fine with me. I don’t need them to.

(Unless Loki is looking…)

 

Your love, peace and consideration is very welcome. Anything else will just be ignored ♥