Perhaps Queen said it best
Lately I've had a tendency to fixate on things. I'll hear something, or read something and it will suddenly dominate my thoughts. Last night, just after I'd finally purged myself of my fixation on disengaged youth, a friend of mine sent me a short story he'd written. Now, he's a remarkably talented writer so it's not uncommon that he'll write things that strike a chord with me, but this story did more than that.
It did strike a chord. I have a deeply held belief that we learn the most important things about love and relationships from our parents, primarily by the example they set for us, but ideally they tell us important things about love and relationships as well. The parents in the story are described as best friends in addition to husband and wife and they impart the message to their kid that it's imperative to be best friends. My own parents were divorced, and I now realize that their friendliness toward each other was a facade but they seemed like good friends. From them I too learned of the importance of friendship. That's not why the story has me so fixated though.
I am by no means a relationship expert (though people sometimes treat me like one) and I've never been married, but in my life I've had one serious relationship and the hardest part of the break up was losing my best friend. He's still a friend, but not my best friend anymore.
By all accounts I took that break up remarkably well. He's the only one who really saw me break down about it (because he was there when it happened and because he's the only one that I really let my gaurd down with anyway), but by the next day I was fully on the it's-for-the-best bandwagon and it wasn't just a facade. I really believe that it was for the best. I think he's happy (happier than he was or could have been with me) and I think I'm happy (happier than I was with him). Not that we were unhappy together, but it's relative.
If you asked me I would tell you I'm honestly and truly over it and have been since very soon after it happened. There's one thing though that still hurts and that's the fact that I lost my best friend.
I met him when I was 18 years old and fell in love right away. Not like love at first sight. Lets be honest, when you see someone and immediately think you're in love that's usually more lust than anything else. The first time I saw him I didn't think I was in love, I thought he was going to be a very important part of my life, that I had to get to know him, and that I would always have him in my life somehow. It took three meetings (the first two of which resulted from small-worldy coincidences because I was too shy to actually talk to him in the class we had together) before he started to actually remember me, and about eight months for him to decide he wanted to be with me. During those eight months we became best friends. People who didn't know any better often thought we were already a couple because we were always together and very affectionate (he always had his arm around me, or we'd be holding hands, sometimes we slept together in the literal sense, etc). He's the one that took me out on Valentine's Day, and my 19th birthday. We used to say that we shared a brain.
When we finally broke up I was 26. He'd been my best friend for 8 years and I was beside myself about losing that. It took me about a day to reconcile myself to losing my boyfriend, but it was probably a year later by the time I got over the impulse to immediately e-mail him whenever I had news to share. It's been about three and a half years since we broke up and now we probably e-mail each other once every couple of months, but occasionally I still see something or hear something and have the impulse to call him or e-mail him because he's the only person that would get it in the same way I do.
I've talked a few times about dating and how I hate it and how the guys that like me are rarely the guys I like and even when they are there always seems to be something missing. I'm not the type to compare new guys to my old boyfriend. If I did though, they wouldn't be falling short on looks, or intelligence, or sense of humor, or kindness, but it's hard to compete with best friends. I mean, my other best friends could but they're all women and I'm not attracted to women (even attractive women).
It did strike a chord. I have a deeply held belief that we learn the most important things about love and relationships from our parents, primarily by the example they set for us, but ideally they tell us important things about love and relationships as well. The parents in the story are described as best friends in addition to husband and wife and they impart the message to their kid that it's imperative to be best friends. My own parents were divorced, and I now realize that their friendliness toward each other was a facade but they seemed like good friends. From them I too learned of the importance of friendship. That's not why the story has me so fixated though.
I am by no means a relationship expert (though people sometimes treat me like one) and I've never been married, but in my life I've had one serious relationship and the hardest part of the break up was losing my best friend. He's still a friend, but not my best friend anymore.
By all accounts I took that break up remarkably well. He's the only one who really saw me break down about it (because he was there when it happened and because he's the only one that I really let my gaurd down with anyway), but by the next day I was fully on the it's-for-the-best bandwagon and it wasn't just a facade. I really believe that it was for the best. I think he's happy (happier than he was or could have been with me) and I think I'm happy (happier than I was with him). Not that we were unhappy together, but it's relative.
If you asked me I would tell you I'm honestly and truly over it and have been since very soon after it happened. There's one thing though that still hurts and that's the fact that I lost my best friend.
I met him when I was 18 years old and fell in love right away. Not like love at first sight. Lets be honest, when you see someone and immediately think you're in love that's usually more lust than anything else. The first time I saw him I didn't think I was in love, I thought he was going to be a very important part of my life, that I had to get to know him, and that I would always have him in my life somehow. It took three meetings (the first two of which resulted from small-worldy coincidences because I was too shy to actually talk to him in the class we had together) before he started to actually remember me, and about eight months for him to decide he wanted to be with me. During those eight months we became best friends. People who didn't know any better often thought we were already a couple because we were always together and very affectionate (he always had his arm around me, or we'd be holding hands, sometimes we slept together in the literal sense, etc). He's the one that took me out on Valentine's Day, and my 19th birthday. We used to say that we shared a brain.
When we finally broke up I was 26. He'd been my best friend for 8 years and I was beside myself about losing that. It took me about a day to reconcile myself to losing my boyfriend, but it was probably a year later by the time I got over the impulse to immediately e-mail him whenever I had news to share. It's been about three and a half years since we broke up and now we probably e-mail each other once every couple of months, but occasionally I still see something or hear something and have the impulse to call him or e-mail him because he's the only person that would get it in the same way I do.
I've talked a few times about dating and how I hate it and how the guys that like me are rarely the guys I like and even when they are there always seems to be something missing. I'm not the type to compare new guys to my old boyfriend. If I did though, they wouldn't be falling short on looks, or intelligence, or sense of humor, or kindness, but it's hard to compete with best friends. I mean, my other best friends could but they're all women and I'm not attracted to women (even attractive women).
posted by Beth at
8:04 PM
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