Once, a few years ago I went rock climbing with my boyfriend. Technically, he was my fiancé, we had even had a big engagement party, but that’s a whole other story.... We had moved in together about three weeks before and were still in the throes of setting up our nest. We didn't even have a washing machine.
Rock climbing apparently is, as many relationship books will tell you, a good way to keep the romance alive, build strong connections and face relationship obstacles (both real and metaphorical).
So there I am climbing walls of coloured synthetic rock, breaking my fingers off trying to grip and grasp, wearing that god-awful harness which
makes your arse look like J-Lo's (admittedly not hard for me), getting to the top and having a conniption at the height and how the hell I'm going to get back down. I'm be-laying him, trying not to jerk and jolt him to the ground... It's fun, I mean, it could be worse. He could ask me to go caving or scuba diving- I will never, for any living soul, do those two things.
We get home, cook dinner, maybe watch some tv and go to bed.
We go to bed and go to sleep. We have done that for pretty much the whole three weeks. Go to bed turn the light off. I find this weird. I think that this is what happens to people who have lived together for three decades not three weeks.
So I say.
Turn the light on. What’s going on? This is strange. It doesn't feel right. What is happening?
He says.
I don't know. I just don't think I'm feeling it. I don't think I love you anymore.
After that I'm not entirely sure what happened.
There were tears and screaming. Lots of screaming. Lots of tears. Incredulous and wretched tears.
And then there were questions. Why? Why? Why? Apparently he thought moving in together would "change the way he felt about me". Fuzzy fucking logic.
It didn’t make sense. I'd jumped though so many hoops. With the impossible family who took months to accept me, but as it turned out, they liked me more than he did in the end.
At 6am I am still sitting on the couch starting out at the window. I don't go to work and instead I sit on the couch all day long. I call two people but I can’t actually speak, only blubber and hang up in frustration. In the afternoon I walk to the supermarket. I buy a big bottle of chocolate milk and drink it. I pick up his suits from the dry-cleaner and carry them home. When I get back he is there in bed- crying.
In the weeks and months that follow I slowly untangle myself and my life from a person that was a central focus for two years.
As break ups go it wasn't too nasty. It was more just very very inconvenient. I had to move house again and deal with the feeling of complete failure that had engrossed me.
I didn't do anything massively nutty or unjustifiable. Ok, maybe one night of 3am crying in my car out the front of his house and a set of particularly cutting but perfectly concocted text messages.
I would like to think that I could be friends with this person (but only because I think I should) and that being friends shows some sort of stoic resolve and maturity, when actually I find him quite hollow and I seriously hate his taste in music. He won’t even accept my friend requests on facebook, which I at first found amusing but now find down right rude.
A mate of mine says being friends with an ex is bullshit- why would you want to have something as mundane and ordinary as a friendship relative to the fireworks and absolute love that you once shared? I like this idea. I like it a lot.
On the anniversary of my emancipation from what would have been a horrible and unfulfilling marriage (if we ever even got that far) I sent him a simple text message.
Thank you!
and finally deleted his number out of my phone...
The moral of the story?
Rock Climbing does shit for your relationship if you are already on a mission: impossible.
And never trust a guy who asks you to marry him when he’s taken a villain...