***Warning – extremely long, potentially emotional blog follows. (But if I keep trying to edit it, I’ll never finish it)****
So, the ”Army Guy Story” picks up a few short weeks after moving, when I was just getting used to living in a world that I had finally accepted did not hold Army Guy, Army Guy naturally comes back. (Technically I brought him back – but it was an accident. Except that I don’t believe in accidents, so I’ll say that it was an unconscious action. I accidentally included him on a mass email… ) At any rate, he replied to the email, and I replied to his email, and a week later, we were back together. But it was a long week filled with hours and hours of talking and emailing, and phone conversations in which he apologized and I went into excruciating detail about how much he’d hurt me. And it was a week in which I remembered how nice it was to have him in my life, and a week in which he told me, while sitting in his car in the pouring rain, that he loved me, that in fact he suspected he’d always loved me, (but was scared of such intense emotion so early, and it was that fear that had motivated him to accept his ex-girlfriend’s offer of reconciliation, followed quickly by regret, followed shortly thereafter by their break-up, and followed eventually by a lame and thus unsuccessful attempt to re-establish contact with me.) In response, I admitted that I was in love with him as well, and suspected I had been since the moment I laid eyes on him way back in September in that cheap Mexican restaurant.
Over the course of our conversations that week, I was able to get him to see that his mistake had not been in doubting his feelings, or feeling scared, but in not talking to me about it, not processing it with me and not making decisions about our relationship with me. As a result, he promised, (literally said “I promise”) to always process out loud, to tell me his fears and his thoughts and let us work through them together.
But I didn’t just fall blindly back into a relationship with him because he said he loved me, or promised to “process” with me. I decided to take him back, to give it a second chance, because I needed to know. I needed to know what would have happened if our relationship had just been allowed to run its course, and because I needed to know that I’d given it every thing I had. I needed to get rid of all those “what if’s” that had been haunting me for the past 4 months. I went into this second round of our relationship with my eyes wide open to the possibility that it wouldn’t work again, but knowing that it couldn’t possibly hurt as much as it had the first time, and that whatever happened, I would know I’d tried. And of course, beyond, or maybe below, all of that, I took him back because I was ass over elbows in love with him.
Initially things were wonderful. In those first few weeks, he was expressive, and communicative and emotionally connected. We communicated via phone or email every day, he confirmed and reaffirmed that he loved me often, in words and actions. We saw each other frequently and continued to get to know each other again, and to color in the sketch of what our relationship would look like and feel like. For the first time in my life, I went into a relationship assuming it would last, assuming he was what he said he was, and trying not to hold back parts of myself. It was a great feeling: to go forward with optimism instead of doubt, hope instead fear.
He constantly amazed me with his ability to not just tolerate, but to seemingly adore the most annoying, quirky parts of my personality, things I don’t think even my closest friends would count as attributes: He found my inability to filter my thoughts endearing, even when he learned things he would have preferred not to know. He handled my insecurities and overly emotional reactions like a champ. He loved my stories – even, no especially, the really long ones. He said that he thought my (somewhat) excessively emotional approach to life was a good balance for his often emotion-less approach, and I believed that I might learn to hold myself in check a little, learn to process quietly more from him. And he shared things with me about his life as a soldier and his experiences in combat that helped me to understand him on a level I hadn’t had before, and confirmed my impression of him as a strong, reliable, intelligent, brave individual. I was still awed by him, (though not as much as I had been the first time around) and saw him as the most intelligent, compassionate, courageous, witty, loving, and endearing man I’d ever encountered. And he made promises to me, which I kinda loved. Promises I didn’t even ask him to make, but that he seemed to know I needed to hear. Aside from his promise to process his thoughts with me, he also promised that he would never disappear on me (I have a weird pattern of men just disappearing), he promised that no matter what happened he would always face me, always process with me, and always do the right thing by me. And I believed him because I could see the sincerity in his eyes, and because he was, for better or worse, “Army Guy,” which I believed meant he always did the honorable thing, the right thing, even when, or maybe especially when, it was the hard thing to do. In return, I promised to always believe in him, to trust his promises and to always accept all parts of him -the good, the bad and the ugly.
I don’t know what caused the shift, if it was one event, or more a slow slide into dysfunction. All is know is he started to slowly slip away from me. It wasn’t like the first time, where I felt him cut off from me from half way around the world; this time it was just gradual degeneration of our connection. The storyteller in me wants to go into the details, but I won’t, because to recount the details is to reopen them to debate and interpretation in an effort to understand “why”, and I don’t have the energy for that anymore. But more to the point, it simply doesn’t matter. Going back over what he said, and what I said, and what I thought and what I thought he meant doesn’t change the outcome, which is that he broke every promise he made to me; he pulled away, he refused to process with me, and he disappeared.
There is a part of me that occasionally wonders what I did that was so awful, so overwhelming, so intolerable as to force this mutation of his character, push him to break his promises and run like a coward. But then I remind myself that I am not responsible for his behavior or his choices. I remind myself that not only is he a fully grown, adult man with the gift of speech, but that I also gave him multiple, explicit opportunities to tell me first what he wanted out of the relationship, and later what was wrong. Disappearing was never his only option.
Even when things were good, they never exactly easy. The Army always came first, he made no secret of that, although often expressed guilt about it. I accepted that as part of the deal, although I’m not sure he ever really trusted that I had. His schedule was often unpredictable and his hours long, and it was not uncommon for me to go a few days without hearing from him, which initially caused me stress, which resulted in some level of nagging of him, but eventually I started to relax and trust his promise that he’d always come back, that he would check in as soon as he could. When I would be seized with insecurity when I hadn’t heard from him in a few days I would remember him, the day before he left for the first trip looking me in the eye and saying “if I don’t call, its because I can’t, not because I don’t want to. I will always come back to you eventually,” and I knew that he meant it and it would calm me immediately. And everytime he did “come back to me”, my trust and faith in him grew, and my anxieties lessened.
I started to need reassurances and confirmations less often, and I started to try to find a comfortable rhythm for our relationship. But I think by then, about 4 weeks in, he had already started to pull away. He would get so upset with himself when he couldn’t commit to plans or had to change plans that he became unwilling to discuss schedules, and so I stopped bringing it up. When we interacted on a purely intellectual level or traded funny emails he seemed to do ok, but any straying into relationship territory, like when I tried to talk about his increasing distance and his propensity to overreact to his perceptions that he was letting me down, he shut down. As my frustration and stress level started to rise, I thought about just giving up and walking away. But the thought was always unbearable, and always reaffirmed that a few minutes on the phone with him every few days was still better than no minutes with him ever.
But perhaps more importantly, I didn’t want to take off at the slightest sign of trouble, I didn’t want to break the promises I’d made to him. I saw this as not only a pivotal period in our relationship, but also in my own life. I’m not generally one who does well in a crisis or a challenge. I’m pretty quick to pack it up when its no longer fun or easy. But this time, the goal felt worth the effort and I was a little curious to see if I could do it. I think he was waiting for me to say I’d had enough, that he wasn’t what I wanted, that he wasn’t who I wanted, which was a pattern in his life. I didn’t want to be another person in his life to turn and run because things got hard. So I decided to stay and try to show him that I could do this, that I could accept and support him, and that I could handle his lifestyle.
I knew that being in a relationship with a military officer, even one who wasn’t “on the line” anymore, was not going to be easy, but I figured I was uniquely suited for it. I was comfortable enough being single, and had been single for so long, that I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend to go to parties with me, and take care of my car, or do whatever else “traditional” boyfriends/husbands do. In fact, the idea of having to integrate him, make room for him, in my life was a small source of stress, and when I realized that his schedule would make that integration a very slow process I was relieved. The bottom line, for me, was that I loved him for his sense of humor, his ideals, his intelligence, and for the way he saw me. As long as I could talk to him occasionally, see him occasionally, and know that he was a part of my life, I was fine with everything else. I was in love with him, but not dependent on him to engage in or support my life in any specific way. He was what I’d always looked for – a bonus in an already good life.
The first thing I did was to reconnect with my life independent of him. I’d gotten fairly wrapped up in the drama of him – the drama of him reappearing, and wonderfulness that was having him back, and then the drama of realizing he was pulling away, the insecurities and fears it sparked and the emotional spin that sent me off into. In taking a step back I realized that I was probably overwhelming him, asking questions he couldn’t answer and making him think I was more dependent on him than I was. So I came up with a plan to distract myself from how much I missed him, and the reality that the relationship wasn’t going exactly as I had pictured it. I immediately started to ramp up my social calendar. I started spending more time at the gym – finding immense relief in the all consuming nature of a hard workout. Not only did I not think about him while I was working out, but afterward, I was always infused with boundless optimism and a belief that I could handle anything that happened, and in that haze of endorphins and self satisfaction, I was able to face the possibility that the relationship might not work, but either way I’d be able to survive it.
Communication continued to devolve into misunderstanding, hurt feelings, and failed attempts to connect. I started to feel like I couldn’t say anything right: no matter what I said or how I said it he heard something judgmental or accusatory in it. Periods between communication grew, and I continued to struggle to let him set the pace, to find “neutral” ground on which to connect. But eventually I reached my limit, and I sent an email (since he didn’t generally answer his phone), offering him an opportunity to tell me if anything was wrong – if he was avoiding me, ignoring me, annoyed with me etc. His response was that he wasn’t avoiding or ignoring me, but was slammed at work and needed more time. I assumed he meant more time to fully address the email and told him to take all the time he needed. He apparently took that literally. I determined not to push him on the topic anymore, and to wait for him to initiate the next communication. I filled my the days with work, friends and punishing workouts. I wasn’t sleeping well, I wasn’t eating, and every muscle in my body hurt. After 10 days I finally sent him an email asking him to check in, which in the past always yielded a response. 24 hours later, when I still hadn’t heard from him, I was struck with total clarity. I was the only one working on this relationship and that meant I didn’t owe him anything anymore. I suspected he was hiding out, not knowing how to tell me that he didn’t want to be with my anymore. I imagined that was causing him a fair amount of stress, and that made me feel bad. So I emailed him (because he wasn’t answering his phone) and I told him what I was sure he already knew. Our relationship was over and that I suspected he’d been struggling with the same issues I’d been – not wanting to break his promises, but not knowing how to keep them, and so he didn’t have to hide out anymore. I told him I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t falling apart, and I didn’t hate him (all true). I said that I didn’t think this was the end of our story, and that I hoped he’d be able to talk about it with me soon, because I hated doing this over email. I hit send, and had the first good night’s sleep I’d had in more time than I could remember. I woke up the next morning happy in a way I hadn’t since we’d broken up the first time. I felt free, and I felt light, and I felt confident that things would work out the way they were supposed to.
I was also confident I’d get a response to my email within a day or so. I imagined various scenarios ranging from him agreeing we weren’t a match but suggesting we be friends, to him showing up on my doorstep explaining that he’d been off saving the world and begging me to give him another chance. Neither of those things happened, and after a week or so, I finally accepted that he’d actually disappeared. But I also believed that at some point he’d turn up again, the only problem was I didn’t know if it would be in a week, a month or a year. Part of me wanted to track him down, to stay on him until he was forced to face me. But another part, the bigger part, wanted him to stay disappeared until I was ready for him. Free from the drama, clear of the distractions of trying to achieve this “goal” of a successful relationship, I could see that I didn’t like what my life had become, not just in the last few weeks, but since I’d first met him. It had been non-stop drama and upheaval, both good and bad, and I was done with it. I didn’t want to be so stressed anymore, I didn’t want to be so panicked and unsure, and fueled by drama anymore. And to get away from all of that, I had to become someone who did not love him anymore.
I decided when he did turn up, I would be someone else. I would be someone who wouldn’t be susceptible to his charm, I would be someone he wouldn’t want to be with, and most of all, I would be someone who was not in love him, not even a little bit. I started with the external and kept to my new interest in working out. I hired a trainer and I worked out as hard as I could. I welcomed the pain in my muscles (mostly) as a welcome distraction from my emotional pain. My trainer told me to keep a food journal, and my natural love of tracking and measuring things kicked in and I became obsessed with counting calories and seeing how few calories I could eat in a day. Army Guy had never been shy about his appreciation of my body I drew a sense of satisfaction in watching my body change, knowing that it would look and feel completely different when he next saw me.
I also decided I would not be consumed with hate and anger. I deemed him ”emotionally unavailable” and adopted the rhetoric that he had his path to walk and his issues to address and it wasn’t my problem or responsibility. I had done everything I could to make the relationship work, to honor my promises and I had no regrets about any part of the relationship. I believed I’d found a sort of Zen-like acceptance and I was doing well, I was on track for my transformation. With one exception.
Every so often I would find myself struck by how out of character it was that he’d disappeared, and from there I’d worry that something had actually happened to him. I’d recount his risk factors – after spending the better part of his 20 year career in combat, he had suffered multiple, severe head traumas, which was why he now had a desk job. During one of our last phone conversations he’d told me his blood pressure was through the roof, he was fighting a cold that wouldn’t end, and was immensely stressed out. What if he’d “disappeared” because he’d had a stroke, or a heart attack or worse? That thought, without fail, would literally bring me to my knees. It always kicked up feelings of guilt for having abandoned him and a desperate, agonizing realization that I might have to accept that he was no longer in the world. I realized I could handle the idea of never speaking to him again, of never having any contact with him again, as long as I could picture him sitting at his desk, hanging out with his kids, being alive and happy. The idea that he could be incapacitated or dead was way, way more than I could handle, and so I would remind myself that the simplest answer is usually the right one, in this case that he was a feckless coward, and I would regain equilibrium and go back to working on my transformation.
About 6 weeks after I’d sent him the final email ending it, I finally felt ready to try to find some closure. I felt confident that if I talked to him again I wouldn’t be vulnerable to anything he had to say, and more importantly, if it turned out that something had happened to him, I felt ready to deal with that. I was ready to move on.
I sent him an email asking him to, at minimum, confirm he was alive, and if possible tell me what had happened. He answered that he was alive, but a coward, and it was vindicating to hear him use that word. It also helped to further break the spell that he’d had over me - coward was nowhere in the list of things that drew me to him. He also said that he thought he might be broken, which was a specific reference to a deal we’d made in the beginning that neither of us were interested in dating people who needed to be “fixed”. I hadn’t yet used the word “broken” in my mind, but when he said it I knew it was true, knew that on some level I’d always suspected he was at least a little bit broken - how could he not be broken? He’d spent his entire adult life, not just in the Army, but the Army Rangers, the elite of the elite. He was barely legal to drink the first time he had to kill someone in order to save his own life. But I also believe he was broken before he joined the military. His family was severely dysfunctional, and by his own admission he joined the Rangers because he was trying to outrun his past and prove himself worthy of something he couldn’t define. Broken, broken, and broken. But he didn’t act broken. Until the last few weeks of our relationship.
His attempt to explain why he had disappeared read like a case study of depression and PTSD. Suddenly I saw the demise of our relationship in a different light. Suddenly I realized that while I had been so wrapped up in my own issues about commitment, and honoring promises and being the type of girlfriend that I thought he wanted, I’d barely noticed him flailing right in front of me. All that time I was so proud of myself for being so unselfish, so focused on him and the relationship, when really, I was as selfish as I’d ever been. It was all about my growth, my insecurities, my needs. All. of. it. And this makes me feel so guilty. Not just to have missed it as his girlfriend, but to have missed it as his friend, as one human being to another human being…
I replied to his email and pointed out the signs of depression and I urged him to get help. He, not surprisingly, didn’t respond. What I didn’t do in that email though, was apologize. Now I’m torn between wondering which would be better for him- for me to apologize, or to just leave him alone. There is a big part of me that believes the best thing I can do for him is to stay far away, knowing that for him I represent only things that he doesn’t want to face. I think, now, that the source of much of our conflict and disconnects wasn’t really ever about me, but about whatever demons had finally caught up to him, and whatever spiral of darkness he was sliding into. Somehow I think I became a symbol for his self doubts and his perceived shortcomings. And if that’s true, then the nicest thing I can do (I think) is stay far away from him.
And so I haven’t contacted him again. I fight through the moments when I am overcome with a need to email him and apologize for failing him and I fight through the moments when I want to find a way to save him. I’m still not sure if our story is done now, but part of me thinks (hopes) not. I know that I’ve achieved the transformation I sought and the spell is broken, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get a point where I don’t wonder or care about him. He was my first love and I think that means I’ll feel an attachment to him forever. So be it. And at least now I know.
