Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Girlfriend in Regress

During a heated argument earlier this year, my boyfriend set his jaw and seethed, "You should change the name of your blog to 'Girlfriend in Regress!'" It was so clever and quick that it stopped me dead in my tracks and I couldn't help but laugh. The fight ended shortly thereafter. But, unfortunately, the time has come to seriously consider that suggestion.

We knew things were crumbling a little over a month ago; we were fighting all the time, and making promises to each other that neither had any intention of keeping. We just weren't connecting the way we used to. When the pressure on us became too much to bear, things blew up, my boyfriend went and stayed at a friend's house for a few days, and we ended our relationship. Since then it's been uncharted territory, because we still share a home, and are doing our best to coexist until the end of our lease.

Obviously this isn't the ideal situation for anyone. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him, and truly expected that we'd be together for the duration. We had started talking about buying a house together. Even though neither of us is particularly marriage-minded, we were planning on taking our relationship to a new level of commitment. You'll remember we went and bought rings symbolizing that.

So now we're faced with the daunting task of dismantling, "our life," together. Since the breakup we've been able to be pretty civil, and have continued spending time together (because, well, we still enjoy each other's company) and things have been generally OK. It's nice to know that I can still lean on him for certain things, and neither of us has gone down the vindictive path (yet) so we're able to continue to pay the bills and share a space. Still, the time will come when we'll have to cut all ties and really move on, and that's not something I'm looking forward to after three years together.

I'll do my best to keep writing, even though I am technically now a Girlfriend in Regress.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Keep the Change

I once read somewhere that...

Men get married hoping the woman will never change, 
and women get married hoping the man will change completely. 

That's very true, don't you think? I know in my current relationship that a frequent gripe from my better half is, "You've changed." Hell yea, I've changed, and I hope I change some more.

Change is pretty much the only thing you can be sure of in life. People will change right before your eyes if you're paying close enough attention. When you aren't evolving then you stagnate and nobody likes the smell of stagnation, especially curled up in bed next to them. Relationships change, and if they don't, they die. I never want to look back at my life or my relationships and realize that I've been in the same place, fighting the same battles and making the same mistakes for years on end.

If we get back to the quote, though, does it suggest that women are committed to evolution, while men favor stagnation? Maybe it's not entirely that black and white, but it sure seems like it sometimes. I think men find a cute, young, wide-eyed thing and want to put it under glass and keep it just so. Women want a fixer-upper that can continually be taken to the next level.  But the reality is that you're both going to change, together and independent of each other. And that's not a bad thing.

The struggles come when your evolution or lack thereof makes your significant other feel uncomfortable or unsupported. To be perfectly honest, in my personal life, we've been feeling a lot of this tension lately and I'm not sure what the end result will be. I'm looking forward to a lot of things that maybe my boyfriend isn't quite ready for but as long as we're honest with ourselves and each other, things will work out the way that they're supposed to. We'll evolve and survive or stagnate and die, but no matter what, I'm rooting for change.