We'll Always Have Paris

I just had a brief talk about this with a good friend, and I think maybe it’s time I try to put it in words up here.

Recently my girlfriend and I decided to make exes out of each other.  This was a pretty long term thing too.  We were very near the five year anniversary of our meeting.  

I don’t have a lot of breaking-up experience, but this seemed to me a pretty civil version.  Very unhappy, but not angry.  We had been doing the long-distance thing for most of the time we were together, and maybe it was just a little too long-distance, too long-term.  

That’s not to say there weren’t concrete issues.  I won’t go into them here, but near the end, when we both were feeling the relationship strain, we brought up some fundamental problems that both of us had set aside for the sake of getting along well.  These problems, when we brought them out, were honestly just too much.

It turns out that it’s easy for two very accommodating people to accommodate themselves into a relationship.  It also turns out that it’s very easy to accept and even embrace what is comfortable despite knowing quite well that it’s not what it’s hoped to be.

We both found a great deal of comfort in each other without having to deal with many of the concessions that having to live within easy distance would bring.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was pretty sure she was the one.  She’s not – I know that, but wasn’t it nice when I didn’t know it?