Throbbing Manhood

After my recent breakup (and I will eventually stop going on about this, I promise), I felt the urge to watch a favourite film that I had not seen in some time: High Fidelity, starring John Cusack, based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name. When I first devoured the book, I identified strongly with Rob, the record store owner who could not, for whatever reason, commit to a partner. In the novel and the film, he decides to revisit his past relationships to try to figure out if there is a common thread that leads to him being single.

I recently did a similar exercise; though not as dramatically as in the film, showing up on exes’ doorsteps and so on. I simply wrote down a list of the top 5 characteristics that I remembered from each of my major relationships. What attracted me to these women? What did I remember most about them? What kind of people were they?

It would be indiscreet of me to give details of my findings, but suffice to say that I discovered that all of the women from my past had at least a few characteristics in common, and a couple of those characteristics were issues that I myself also had. These issues were not necessarily deal-breakers, but they could definitely make things difficult.

We Western males live in a world where we are not particularly encouraged to grow up and get serious about anything. We can dress like teenagers well into our thirties and no one will bat an eye. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; there is a lot to be said for maintaining one’s youthful outlook no matter how old one gets.

The problem is when the youthful outlook rests on a bedrock of immaturity. We all have some kind of issue; a button that, when pressed, turns us from a rock-solid adult into a frightened child. No matter how well-dressed we are, no matter what car we drive, no matter how prestigious our job, no matter what totems of success we surround ourselves with, we can all have the emotional equivalent of an Achilles heel.

Maturity is the ability to step back and honestly assess oneself, identify those weaknesses, and take the steps required to heal. Sometimes we only go halfway; we identify the problem and then wear it around like a medical bracelet, without ever making an effort to fix it. We find partners who are in the same place and simply steer around the potholes.

Do yourself a favour and work on filling the potholes instead. The solutions will often be perfectly obvious; the hard part is changing your behaviours and knee-jerk reactions. Do you spend too much? Buy less. Are you insecure? Build your self-esteem. Are you unhealthy? Eat better and exercise.

It may require willpower, and support from friends and family, and you may have setbacks; keep at it, for your own sake and for the sake of those who are trying to love you.

If you watch How I Met Your Mother- and you should if you don’t – you may recall Ted and Marshall’s experiences with breakups and how they coped (badly). Having had my share of breakups over the last 5 years – each with its own degree of difficulty – I have had time to develop some strategies for staying sane and healthy during the healing process. Maybe this will be useful to some of you, so I figured I would share them here:

1)    Feel it when you need to feel it. In other words, don’t bottle up the pain. If you need to cry, cry. If you are angry about something, find a positive way to vent. Don’t take it out on your ex either way, or your friends. Don’t be self-indulgent or wallow; do what you need to do at the time and then do something else.

2)    Don’t sit around. Exercise your body and your mind. In my case, that means running every other day for my body and puzzles or games for my mind, including sudoku, crosswords, PlayStation, etc.

3)    Sit around. Don’t become a manic guy-on-the-go who can’t stand to be home on his own for an hour. In my case, I have a zen meditation practice that means I sit and face a blank wall for 20 minutes or more per day. It trains the mind to be still. Sometimes I also just make a point of kicking back on my couch and watching TV or reading for an hour or two and nothing else.

4)    Stay healthy. Watch your diet and cook your own meals. Get some sun and fresh air. Avoid drinking, drugs, ot sexual misadventures under the guise of “blowing off steam”; they’re probably not going to help, and will only make it harder to perform step 1.

5)    Reach out to friends. Catch up with any you didn’t see much when you were in a relationship. If they want to help you, let them; and find out how you can help them in return. If it was a bad breakup, don’t try to make them pick sides or use them to strike back at your ex.

6)    Respect the space that you and your ex have defined for yourselves. If the split was amicable, chances are you can stay in touch just to see how each other is making out. If it wasn’t, take the time you both need to cool off. Either way, keep it civil and positive. If the breakup was meant to be permanent by mutual agreement, do not try to change the deal.

7)    Don’t jump into another relationship right away. You might very well meet a new potential partner before you are completely over the last one. If so, just be honest with him or her; explain that you’re interested but need some time. Don’t jerk anyone around.

8)    Cultivate forgiveness. If you screw up, forgive yourself. Don’t add it to the pile of reasons to feel badly. Learn from what might have gone wrong in the relationship. Be gentle with yourself and those around you, and if applicable, forgive your ex too. Don’t hold on to hard feelings.

9)    Make goals. Define for yourself what you would like to be doing in a week, a month, three months, six months. Figure out what you need to do to get there and be honest about whether or not those goals are realistic. Use affirmations; if you have a goal, say it out loud to yourself on a regular basis.

10) Monitor your progress. Don’t let friends, family, or “common knowledge” tell you how long it should take to get over the breakup. It will take what it takes, and if you make a sincere effort, you will feel better sooner than you think.

As I write this, my girlfriend of the last 6 months is on her way to a new life in Toronto, where she will undoubtedly continue a brilliant academic career for the next several years, and then move on again. During our time together, we spent much of it keeping to ourselves, for a number of reasons. She lived at home and did not want to exacerbate an already difficult arrangement, nor did she want to cause anxiety for her younger siblings by fighting with her parents. We both had recently come out of long-term relationships and did not want to make our exes feel badly or contribute to awkward feelings for mutual friends. So, we agreed at the time to keep our relationship between us.

Eventually, we came out of our shell somewhat and by now, of course, everyone who would care knows the fact that Nicole and I had a relationship. What they might not know is what that relationship was like, and why it was important to us. We agreed long ago that when she moved away, I would write this so that our friends could know more if they wanted to.

Before I continue, I want to add a caveat. I’m writing this post to compliment and celebrate a young woman who made a big difference in my life. It is not meant to slight the importance of the relationships I have had before. I am blessed to have been loved and supported by several good women over the last 25 years, and I feel fortunate to be on good terms with them still. As they know, my life has been affected by a series of abandonments, poor choices, and other factors that have caused me to struggle long and hard to get to a place where I care enough about myself to be a good partner for someone else. Poor communication and self-control from my end, however well-intentioned it may have been, has contributed to disasters in the past.

That’s why I feel compelled to write this now; to celebrate the fact that finally, a relationship is ending – or rather changing – in a positive way. I want to recognize something that went right.

Nicole and I leaned on each other during some difficult early times. We were quite aware of the discomfort people have with May/December relationships. Some assumed that I was going through a mid-life crisis and that she had some other issues, or that we were just each other’s rebounds, or that there was some kind of weird power imbalance between us. We didn’t bother correcting them. The real difficulty of our age difference, we knew, was that we were at different places in our lives, and that meant that she would soon have to move away to continue in school, whereas my circumstances require me to stay here in Saint John. I could no more ask her to change her plans for me than she could ask me to move away from my son. We knew that whatever happened, we were going to have to part at the end of the summer; so we resolved to enjoy the time we had, and redefine our relationship after that.

What we did not count on, to say the least, was falling in love. What was originally meant to be a casual, summer-long relationship evolved into one that has permanently changed the course of our lives, giving us new benchmarks for how we will treat others and how we want to be treated by others. It made me examine myself closely and has given me a new strength. It wasn’t always easy or light, but our connection and ability to communicate and work things out kept putting us back on track, allowing us to relax and enjoy our time together no matter what else was happening around us. As spring turned to summer, we felt comfortable enough to start being more public about the relationship, spending time with small groups of friends, going to dinner or movies, and taking short trips.

I won’t discuss our relationship on an intimate level here. Suffice to say that as we drew closer, I reached what was, for me, a new level of trust and self-respect. I have been guilty in the past of holding partners at arm’s length or feeling deep down as if I did not deserve to be loved, which must have been frustrating to them. I finally felt completely free, in my own mind, to just be myself; and I felt loved as myself.

The love we felt for each other fed into passion, which fed back into love, growing as it repeated that cycle. We were often surprised at the depths of our feelings; sometimes it even scared us. I tried in vain to explain to friends how important this relationship had become to me, to us; how good it was, and how much better we are for having had it. As much as I miss her now – and I do more than I can say – I am comforted knowing that I was good for her, as she was for me.

We don’t have any plans for the future as a couple, except to build and maintain our new friendship as determinedly as we did our relationship. We don’t consider it to be some sort of demotion; we are building on a foundation of love and trust and happiness. We are keeping our options open and will continue to truthfully examine our feelings.

Will we ever be a couple again as we were this summer? I don’t know. We were the right thing at the right time for each other once; it is perfectly possible that we could be again someday, and that is a comfort. For now, we each have new challenges to face and we will support each other however we can, because above all we want each other to be happy.

We appreciate the support and friendship that many of you have shown us. After a while, the only moments of unhappiness we shared were rooted in the fact that we could not always be together, both at the time and in the future. It forced us to appreciate the moment we were in, and that is a great gift. I know I speak for both of us when I say that I hope you will make the most of the time you have with your loved ones too.