Starting Over

Ryan and I had been together six months when we broke up for a week.

Saying it like that makes it sound so trivial, when really it was one of the hardest emotional journeys I've gone through to date.  It wasn't just the breakup or the fights or the fact that I wasn't over S.  I was finally forced to face myself and figure out what I wanted.  

And despite everything I'd convinced myself of, I didn't want S.  I wanted Ryan.

Our second first date was so awkward and painful and sweet.  It remains in my heart as one of the happiest days of my life.  And not just because of the dog.

You see, for the last seven years, Bear's been the main man in my life.  I grew up in a rocky home situation, had a lot of crappy boyfriends, but Bear was always there for me.

Needless to say, he's a pretty spoiled dog.  And for a long time, I think Ryan kind of resented him.

So when we went out on our second first date and brought Bear along, I knew this was some kind of turning point.  We took Bear to our favorite walking path.  It's a nice walk through the woods, and dead-ends at the reservoir.  I don't have to keep Bear on his leash and he's always rewarded with a swim.  But as usual, I'm getting all caught up in my dog when I'm supposed to be talking about Ryan.  

After seeing S and how things were so broken between us, I was afraid it would be like that with Ryan and I.  And I'll admit, there were a couple cracks.  Ryan tread so softly around me, like he was afraid I would break.  I kept my guard up, because I wasn't ready to trust him yet.  We were so familiar to each other, yet everything also seemed so new.  It was a strange feeling.

Ryan asked me if he could hold my hand.  I said yes.  He couldn't stop staring at me and smiling at me.  If it weren't for the fact I was so nervous, I probably would have thought he was a little creepy. ;)

We just walked and walked and walked.  We didn't talk about heavy stuff.  We didn't talk about our old problems.  We agreed to start over.  He wanted the chance to show me the person he could be.  I didn't want our old issues and misconceptions to taint the chance we had at a fresh start.  

After our walk, we had ice cream.  I think I joked that I felt like I was back in high school, going on walks and eating ice cream.  It was so nice.

At the end of the night, Ryan didn't try to kiss me.  He just held me really tight.  I've never felt so safe and accepted as I do when he wraps his arms around me.  It's the best place in the world.  He told me he understood that I wasn't ready to just jump back in to the way things were with us physically.  He never pressured me.  There were times, over the next several weeks, when I was outright mean to him.  I had given up fighting back with him and instead just bottled up a lot of my hurt and anger and now I was letting it out.  And Ryan just stood there and took it.  He knew I was testing him, even if I myself didn't know.  

I felt a little shell-shocked after the emotional rollercoaster I had put myself through.  But after that second first date, I was absolutely sure of something: that Ryan was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Whenever we fight or get on each other's nerves or I start freaking about about the future, I just think about his shy, sweet smile that day in the woods.  And suddenly there's nothing to be mad at or afraid of.  And I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.

The Breakup: Part 2

Hey friends, sorry for the absence!

Things have been insane over here with work/life/projects.

And I get so distracted reading blogs that I forget to write my own posts.  Womp.

But let's pick up where we left off, shall we?

About a year ago, Ryan and I had just gone through a mini-breakup.

We decided to get back on track.

Sorta didn't happen.

Ryan and I were still fighting a lot.  He had this big emotional wall up between us and I also started to close myself off.  That's when S came back into the picture.  He told me he'd made a mistake and that he still loved me.

He's really good at dropping emotional bombs on my life.

I felt confused and afraid and torn between two people.  Ryan gave me stability, but our relationship was floundering emotionally.  And S still had this crazy hold on me.  So I ended it with Ryan.  Again.

I told him I didn't love him, that I never had.  He begged and pleaded with me to stay, but it just didn't feel right anymore.

I felt like I was with someone I barely knew.

We split up for a week.  At first I felt strangely liberated.  I saw S twice in that time, and it was so awful. I had all these high expectations that I would see him and we would just rekindle and everything would be like a cheesy romantic movie.  

Yeah, that's why those are called movies and not real life.

The truth is we couldn't even look each other in the eye.  We had nothing left to talk about.  What we had was so broken that there was no way we could ever put it back together.  

We, too, had become strangers.

A few days into our breakup Ryan asked if he could come over and talk to me.  He told me he just needed to get some things off his chest.  He told me he'd put up that emotional wall intentionally - he never planned on getting into a serious relationship while he was in the Navy.  He was going to travel and see the world and just generally sleep around.  He went out during our breakup too.  He realized that he didn't want to be in a bar, chasing girls.  He wanted to be at home, with me.  He told me he realized that he'd basically treated me like crap and that wasn't fair to me and he was sorry.

He told me how much he loved me, that he was willing to do anything to save our relationship and he just wanted a second chance to prove that he could be what I needed.

He said everything I said to S when he left me.

And then he hugged me and told me he understood if I never wanted to talk to him again and he walked out of my apartment.

A few more days went by.  A week after Ryan and I split, I was supposed to hang out with S.  And he blew me off.

I sat on my couch sobbing.  Here, almost a year later, and I was still a wreck over a guy who clearly didn't give a damn about me.  I felt like such a fool.  I sent him a text (I know, the digital age makes us all so overwhelmingly mature) telling him I was tired of chasing him.  I've never heard from him since.

I sat there, miserable, and the only person I wanted to talk to about it was Ryan.  I called him and told him everything.  I knew it would break his heart to hear that I had been harboring all these feelings for S, but he'd laid everything bare to me, and it was only fair that I do the same.

I told him that when S left, the only thing I'd wanted was a second chance, and I never got it.  I told him it would make me a hypocrite if I didn't give him one.

He asked me if we could hang out the next day.

I said yes.

Meeting Ryan

The Breakup: Part 1

The Breakup: Part 1

So in Friday's post I told you that when Ryan kissed me, I didn't cry.  You thought it was going to be all rainbows and butterflies from here on out, didn't you?

Well, you thought wrong.

Where do I even begin?  Don't get me wrong, I really liked Ryan and he really like me.  But we had so, so, so many underlying issues that were always causing moments of discontent.  Remember when I said I was originally biding time until S came back?  Well, it's really hard to start a new relationship when you're still in contact (and trying to get back) with your ex.  Ryan and I had a million fights about it, but I just couldn't cut him out of my life.

Ryan also had this big emotional wall up between us.  He told me on an almost daily basis that he never wanted a serious girlfriend.  He told me on an almost daily basis that I could leave whenever I wanted and go find someone else, but I kept hanging on.  The more he pushed me away, the tighter I clung.  There were times I felt like I didn't know him at all.  But at the same time, there were things that Ryan told me that he's never told anyone, and vice versa.  It's a really weird feeling, putting all your trust in someone when you're so closed off from them emotionally.

Finally in January I confessed to a mutual friend between S and I that I was still so in love with S that it was interfering with my relationship with Ryan.  My friend told me that if I were single, S would come around.  And bam, I broke up with Ryan on the spot.  This coming on the coattails of a huge fight between Ryan and I (it's funny, I can never remember what we fight about).  

I feel so bad for Ryan in hindsight.  I didn't really give him a reason why I wanted to break up, I just sort of did it.  Much like S did to me.

I came home and cried and cried and wondered what the hell I was doing.

The next day, I went to get my stuff out of Ryan's apartment.  We had a three-hour long conversation about all of those underlying issues.  We decided to give it another go.  We both promised to try harder.

A little piece of our wall came down.  Little did we know, we were chiseling away at it with butter knives when we needed a wrecking ball.

Meeting Ryan

Sorry for the lack of "Thursday Threads" yesterday.  I forgot to take any pictures.  Womp.  Instead I'm going to write about Ryan and I.  This is going to be kind of a long post, and it lacks in pretty pictures, so if you want to jump off this ride at any time, feel free.

It's always a little awkward when people ask how I met Ryan, because the answer is a pretty simple one: "In a bar."

For the record, as a twenty-something who refuses to date coworkers, doesn't go to church, and rarely shows up for class, there are only so many venues to meet dudes.  I guess I could tell you the short story: he was a friend of a friend and we were all there for my friend's birthday.  But that is just so not interesting and doesn't even begin to describe the craziness and intensity of the last seventeen months.  That's right, we had only been together for a little over a year when we got married.

But this story started long before that.  This story starts in June of 2010, when I've just had my heart stomped on into a thousand tiny little pieces.

You see, Ryan's not the first guy I've ever loved, and I'm not the first girl he ever loved, but that's his own story and he doesn't have a blog so I guess you'll just have to ask him about it if you really want to know.  Two years before I met Ryan (it's really creepy how dates are going to start lining up in this story), I met a guy.  Let's call him S.  I met this guy, you guessed it! At a bar.  I wandered in after work one evening to get some grub (I was in the "I only know how to make PB&J phase" of my life) and plopped my rear down in the only empty seat, next to some dude. 

 If you've never been a girl, in a bar, by herself, then let me fill you in on a little something: it's really, really awkward.  Usually guys hit on you because you're clearly pathetic and miserable and in desperate need of some misguided and poorly placed chivalry.  I am not any of those things.  I hate being hit on.  It just makes me feel... cheap?  Well, I'm also a huge hypocrite because I don't want to go somewhere by myself and have no one to talk to, because I'm a social person.  So I attempt to make conversation with "some dude" sitting next to me.  He wasn't really all that verbose (turns out he was really nervous), but then his snarky, chatty friend turns up and "some dude" decides to set me up with "snarky friend."  Somehow they both end up with my number.

I politely wing my way out of going on a date with "snarky friend" but "some dude" asks me to hang out.  And I do.  Let's get something straight: I was NOT attracted to "some dude."  I was NOT looking for a relationship.  He just seemed like a cool guy, and he was really, really funny.  So we started hanging out.  A lot.  When it got to the point that he hadn't tried to make a move, I decided he didn't like me so therefore I liked him (I'm a sucker for unrequited romance).  That night he kissed me.  And "some dude" became S.  

About a week into our relationship, I swear to God I had this fleeting premonition that S and I were going to grow old together.  A week into our relationship, I was head-over-heels in love.  We were crazy about each other from the get-go.  I'd never been so happy in my life.

Let me just say this: underneath all the sunshine and roses, there was something really, really wrong.  You see, not only was I in love, I was obsessed.  I was unhealthily fixated.  I'm pretty sure I was co-dependent.  But none of that mattered.  Because S was my dream guy and I loved him and he loved me and that's all that mattered.  Even though I was working and in school full-time and S had TWO full-time jobs and we never saw each other and we argued and I started questioning the relationship and whether or not this was what I wanted and whether or not I could keep doing this.  We were in love, man!  And love conquers all, right?

And then the bomb dropped.

Nine months after that first kiss, S and I came home from a night out with friends and he told me he couldn't do it anymore.

My earth shattered.  It didn't matter that I was having doubts.  That 24 hours before, I was thinking about ending our relationship.  Anyone who's ever been dumped can tell you that not only is it humiliating, it turns you into a completely irrational person.

There were days I didn't get out of bed.  I couldn't pay my rent because I drank away all my money every night after work.  I threw myself at any guy who glanced my way.  I cried and cried and cried.  I'm amazed my friends put up with me.  I seriously thought about killing myself.  I wondered if I'd ever stop hurting.  I was sure S and I would get back together, because of that damn "premonition."

We stayed in relative contact.  I'd send him a pathetic text message, he'd (maybe) respond.  It was just enough to keep stringing me along.  He'd tell me he missed me, he couldn't explain why he ended it, maybe things would work out.  It was torture.  He was all I thought about.

We broke up on June 6, 2010.  It's weird that date sticks out in my mind.  Exactly a year and a half later, on December 6, 2011, I married Ryan.  But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Fast forward three months to September 16, 2010.  I'm at a well-known college bar/club for my friend Caitlin's birthday.  She's dating a guy in the Navy, so there are a bunch of his sailor buddies there.  I'm kind of wandering around, talking to Navy guy's friends, most of which I know by now.  I'll be honest, I was on the prowl.  Then there was this guy I didn't know.  And he was cute!  We ended up chatting beside a very large, loud speaker.  I think it was my idea to go sit at a table so we could chat more.

We sat and talked for THREE HOURS!  Ryan told me later that the first night we met, he could tell we had some kind of connection.  He walked me to my car.  He asked me for my number, and of course I gave it to him.  He said his phone was dead but when he got ready to leave, he'd put it on the car charger and text me.  I'd been fed a lot of bullshit by guys that summer, and figured I'd never talk to him again.  Me, setting myself up for failure.

He kissed me.

I got in my car and left.  Now, here's the kicker: I'd done a lot of drinking and slumming around that summer.  And I felt so ashamed.  I had this huge hole in me that S ripped out, and I was trying to fill it with another guy.  I'm pretty sure one guy told me, to my face, that I was "emotionally damaged."  Every time I kissed a new guy, I cried.  "Sobbed" would probably be more appropriate.  

When Ryan kissed me, I didn't cry.

And he texted me, even though I thought he wouldn't.

The next night, we went on our first "real" date.  We walked along the beach and he held my hand and told me about his family.  

I really liked this guy.  Neither of us expected for this to be a long-term relationship.  I was just biding time until S came around, he wasn't looking for a girlfriend.

Well, S did come around.  Ryan did get a girlfriend, and I generally made a mess of things.

Ooooh, the suspense!  Stay tuned for "The Breakup: Part 1"