Or girl, or something like that. I went to the gym yesterday and then the Plough. My arms and shoulders are sore, and my legs. Dude. 😀
Right now I feel like I’m looking at the world through a veil. I’m fuzzy and distant. I want something and I don’t know what.
The “one night” is bothering me.
Tom is sleeping even less than I am. He is really upset. I feel like it is all my fault. I wish I could take his hurt away.
Fuck. Life is complicated sometimes.
In a relationship it’s very rare that something is entirely one person’s fault, and this isn’t one of those cases.
You make excellent friends. You made less than perfect life partners. If only any of us could find this out sooner rather than later, it would solve a lot of problems. (Wow, isn’t that an understatement…)
The feelings you’re having towards him are perfectly ordinary feelings of friendship towards him. None of us wish this kind of emotional hurt on our friends.
I have no advice for you, really. No new advice, anyway. Listen to the old advice you’ve been given, lather, rinse, repeat.
If life were easy…
… then anyone could live it.
It sucks to have someone close to you be in pain and have no way to do anything constructive to help. I wish you luck and hope your own pain lessens in time.
I’ve been holding off on saying anything about your breakup with Tom until I saw how it was going. I can say now that I’m very, very sorry – for the hurt to two people I quite like, and selfishly because I personally enjoyed seeing the two of you together. But in the last year or so the hints I got kept telling me this was coming, so I perhaps braced for it more than you did.
It’s no one’s fault. Really. No one has responsibility for things they can’t control, and neither of you could control this. If there were any fault, it would only be for hanging on when it became clear that you needed to stop. That is a terrible thing to do to yourself and to the one you love.
Sometimes, loving doesn’t mean keeping. Sometimes it means letting go. And I’m proud of you for recognizing that. Heroism is knowing what you need to do, doing it, and counting the cost later.
I recall back in my youth (this was before fire was invented), I was feeling bad and feeling that it was all my fault for breaking up with, or cooling things down with, a boyfriend or three.
My best friend at the time sat me down and said, “These are grown men. They’re responsible for their feelings, not you. When you say that it’s all your fault, you’re not giving them credit for being adults. You’re saying that you’re in control of their feelings. Stop that.”
I have to say, this is one of the most tactful, yet blunt, wielding of the clue stick I have seen you do.
Well done. 😛