What is owed to someone you've spent eight years of your life with? Or anyone you've spent a great deal of time with in a romantic relationship? I guess it varies depending on the people and the relationship, really. And the state of the relationship when one of those people decides to pick up their marbles and go home. A friend of mine is asking that question today because of an email she got late last night. She and the sender of this email dated on and off for six years and went through some very grown up and traumatic things during that time. They remained friendly for two years post-split, but not really friends. They had that awkward time where they lingered after the break-up, but she put an end to that after realizing she couldn't hook up with him without catching feelings. They've been talking sparingly over the last two years because he's been helping her with a project (and, more importantly, providing his input for free). It hasn't been like a friendship, just more of a working relationship and, like I said, even that only happens every now and then. A year and a half ago he began dating someone else and it became serious rather quickly. She asked him early on whether them still talking on occasion was going to be an issue now that he was dating someone seriously and he said something along the lines of it being none of his girlfriend's business. He even said that she was family and if his girlfriend had a problem with him helping her, she'd just have to get over it. As far as the friend knew, his girlfriend didn't have any issues with it. If she did, he never offered that information and the friend never asked.
So imagine her surprise last night when she got home from dinner and saw an email from him in her Inbox. It was delivered at around 12:00AM, with the subject line, "Please Read". Upon opening it, she read three a few lines that basically amounted to, "Hey, I can't have contact of any kind with you anymore cuz it's affecting my relationship with my girlfriend, bye." No, 'take care', no phone call to explain the reasons (although, interestingly, he did call this afternoon but she didn't answer). Just done. You'd never know these people dated for six years and were in each other's lives for eight years total. Oh, and he decided to send this on a day when she was presenting the project he had helped with and he had to have known that the potential outcomes of that presentation weren't all that great. I don't know what's worse; the email itself and its lack of detail or knowing that he was aware of the timing being bad but sent it anyway. Everyone has a different theory; his girlfriend told him she was pregnant and he panicked, he proposed to her but she refused to marry him until he cut his ex out of the picture. And, in theory, those both make sense...kinda...but not really. When she first opened it up and read it, the friend wondered if he was the one who actually authored it because the tone was so cold and just not him. He's a very loyal dude and she wasn't sure he would just end eight years of friendship in a three line email at twelve in the morning. But she realized that, if the girlfriend had sent it, it would eventually get back to him what she'd done and that'd be the end of their relationship, so he had to have done it himself. (Or maybe she authored it but made him send it. Who knows at this point.) But who takes 18 months to decide, 'You know what...your ex-girlfriend is a problem yo'? I would think she'd know that much earlier and say as much. Understandably, the friend is upset. Because it's vague and was totally out of left field and probably not expected to happen at all, forget about it happening during such a crazy time in her life. Just saying, 'we're done' and not giving the option to say a proper goodbye is just too harsh. I don't get it. We talked about it for an hour and she read the actual email to me and I still don't get it. Her assessment is that they must be taking some kind of big step in the relationship (marriage or a kid) for him to send that email. That makes sense but it's still cold to just shut someone out. Even if you have to cut someone off, you should at least elaborate as to why and close the chapter in a proper way.
Hearing her talk about this story reminded me of my engagement and disengagement in my mid-20's. It's common knowledge that the disengagement was not my choice, but nowadays I can't imagine what would've happened had we gone through with it. We planned to go on vacation and check out wedding venues and she even joked beforehand that maybe we'd just get hitched while we were there. but a few days into the trip something changed drastically. Suddenly she was distant and uninterested in wedding planning. I didn't push her about it, figuring she'd tell me what was up when she was ready. We went out and spent an entire day sightseeing but didn't talk much and then turned in early. I think she knew well before then, maybe even before we landed for our vacation, that she was going to leave me. The next day, I woke up in our hotel room to a note saying, "I'm sorry, I can't marry you." She was gone, already on a plane back home, and I was left blindsided and wondering what the hell went wrong. I blamed myself. I defended the way she left to the people I loved, believing it had to be a mistake and we'd work things out. But it's hard to work things out when somebody changes their number and essentially goes into hiding post-break-up. I had no choice but to let it go. A few months later, I was at a party and came across someone who was a mutual friend of ours, although they did not know that or know of our history. She talked about my now ex-fiancee and her new boyfriend and my heart dropped. Once she said the ex had a boyfriend everything made sense. I'd heard rumors back when we were just friends about her sleeping with a married man, but I never paid attention to it because of our friendship. And because I thought she was better than that. This man was a husband and a father and I never would've guessed she'd be capable of being a homewrecker. By the time we fell into dating, I had forgotten all about those whispers anyway.I showed up at her door asking what had gone wrong (by then I was back in freefall but sobered up long enough to hurl some curse words her way), not letting on that I knew exactly why she went away. She looked like she'd just seen a ghost and avoided my questions saying it was 'complicated' and said we'd just talk another time. When we did talk, she gave me some story about how she couldn't give me what I needed and so she chose to walk away. I told her I was under the impression she'd left me for her boy toy and she went silent. Then she denied everything and left. She was in and out of my life for the next four months or so but only when she could think of a convincing reason for leaving the way she did. Or when she wanted to try and convince me she didn't cheat. But it was all pointless. At that point, I'd heard from the dude's ex-wife and how she found out they were cheating and how my ex leaving me just happened to coincide with the same day her ex filed for divorce. Evidently, they'd been having an affair for at least six years and have since married and had a child together. I don't understand affairs at all but what has always thrown me about our relationship is why she said she wanted to marry me and why she said yes when I proposed. My gut feeling is that she felt being with me was better than nothing (and doesn't that make me feel so special). She was eight years my senior and both her siblings had settled down already. I'm guessing the boy toy had told her early that year (when we began dating) that he would never leave his wife and she decided to stop holding out for someone she couldn't live without and settle for someone she could live with. But when he finally did leave his wife, I became disposable and she moved on. Who cares how that decision affects anyone else, right? I'll just get over it. And I have. I've survived worse and, in the grand scheme of things, she's just a blip on the radar.
I'm not comparing my ex-fiancee to my friend's ex-boyfriend at all (although, curiously, three out of the four of us mentioned in this post are Tauruses so...take what you will from that). Clearly, her ex loved her for many years and they went through a lot of things together. I don't know that my ex ever loved me to begin with and we certainly weathered far less in our eight months of togetherness. But, even though the circumstances were different, I think both the friend and I deserved more than an email and a letter. Her situation has yet to reach its final outcome yet, but I think eight years in someone's life means you should at least have a phone call or something to explain why you're cutting off contact. Even if it's because your chick is "making" you. My cousin and his high school sweetheart had to cut off contact when his girlfriend demanded it, but he still managed to un-whip himself long enough to call her and explain everything. I don't know...I just hope she gets the closure on the situation that she needs.
