My first night at college, one of my roommates went around meeting everyone on our co-ed dorm floor. The college had accidentally admitted too many freshmen that year, so they had to overfill our dorm regardless of the fire code. Instead of two students per room and six students per suite, there were three to a room and nine to a suite. There were a lot of us on each floor, and every suite was its own self-contained party waiting to happen. My roommate made a quick friend a few doors down and brought him back to our room. I was lying on my top bunk, reading a book when she brought him in our room and introduced him to me. I looked down, said hello, and went back to reading. Over the next few weeks, I ran into him several times while walking through campus to my classes. We talked a little more each time, and soon we effortlessly became good friends.
After a few months, we were spending a lot of time together, thoroughly enjoying the easy chemistry we had. We talked about everything and soon became best friends. I never even thought of him any differently until one Friday night. He hadn’t mentioned it before that night, but he had met a sorority girl and asked if I wanted to walk down the street with him to a party at her house in the college town abutting our dorm. I wasn’t into drinking, but we happened to go to one of the partiest schools in the country, so traipsing in and out of house party after house party was a common practice. When we walked in and I recognized no one, I felt a little foreign. He went off to find her and when he did, I watched them kiss. All of a sudden, I was overwhelmed with what felt like an invisible punch to the stomach. I couldn’t stand what I was feeling, and in that moment I realized that what I felt for him was so much deeper than friendship. I loved him. I left as quickly as possible and ran back down the street to our dorm.
Days filled with classes, people, and excitement. This whole new life at a school with 18,000 students and eight suitemates made every moment a blast. There were happy, spontaneous distractions happening constantly. But I also felt the heaviness of having fallen in love and not knowing what to do with it since we were such good friends. We remained close; we spent so much of our free time together, but I wanted to be able to openly love and be loved by him. We used to stay up late talking in his room on his bed. He was in one of the rare one-person dorm rooms. I think his parents thought that would encourage his studies. I’d purposely fall asleep with my head at his feet and his head at mine. He felt strongly for me too, but felt iffy about being in a committed relationship right off the bat in college. I never knew if he would come around, if he would give in to love. I longed for him to.
Then one night, my roommates, he, and I walked down the street to a party. I remember talking to some people as I was standing next to a chair in the living room of a house I had never been in. All of a sudden, he came out of nowhere, beelined toward where I was propped on the arm of the chair, sat down on my lap, and kissed me passionately as we fell into the chair together. I was shocked and elated, bursting with joy as it was happening. This long, mind- blowing kiss signaled that we were no longer just friends. Granted, he was drunk, but I rejoiced at his lapse in inhibition. I remember my roommates’ looks of thrilled surprise as they watched. They clapped afterwards, as if to say, Finally! Then, he grabbed my hand, swooped me up, and led me out the door. He made it clear that we were going back to the dorm, and I grinned from ear to ear, elated to finally be walking in his arms. When we got there, we went in his room and unleashed our love on each other. He knew I wanted to wait until I was married, so we held back, but it was nevertheless like the most passionate movie I could ever imagine.
From that night on, I no longer slept at his feet. We spent every night in each other’s arms, whether in his room or mine. My room- mates liked him, and they quickly grew accustomed to having him there. When we weren’t in class or studying, we were together. I knew without a doubt that he was the one I wanted to spend my life with. Soon, I let down my guard and gave my whole self away.
We knew each other’s dreams. We knew each other’s goals. We talked endlessly about life and we both loved living it to the utmost. We also knew every inch of each other’s bodies. I loved him with every cell of my being. Passion flowed mutually and endlessly. I didn’t care about spending time with anyone else. I didn’t care about doing more than was expected of me in my classes if it meant that it would keep me from him. He became my home, my everything. Our emotional, conversational, and physical chemistry flowed like the most natural thing in the world. I had the best upbringing I could imagine, and now I got to experience more love than I could ever imagine for another human being. It was like The Notebook on steroids.
Years went by. Our university was right on the beach, so our lives were not only filled with the excitement of all the people we were around, but also the enjoyment of the natural world right outside. I never wanted to rent a place together unmarried, as he pushed for, but we were nevertheless inseparable; wherever our days took us, our nights brought us back to each other. Aside from his love of surfing, he got into rock climbing, kayaking, and outdoor guiding. Summers pulled us in different directions, and we always pined for the times that we’d be back with each other again.
Four years passed, and we graduated from college. I became a bike tour leader and he became a river guide. That began a trend of having to endure many months of time without seeing each other. He became a better and better kayaker, I later became a river guide, and we began traveling abroad to meet up with a river guiding company in South America.
Almost eight years and umpteen adventurous experiences later, while living together for the first time and renting the bottom floor of a Victorian house in a river town, everything changed, unbeknownst to me. One night, he sat me down. He told me he thought we should go our separate ways. Not just for a time. Indefinitely. I was shocked beyond belief. Never in a million years would I have guessed that we’d break up. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. We were one. I broke down uncontrollably and inconsolably. I yearned for him to rethink it, to change his mind in the morning. I could tell that that wasn’t going to happen. Ever since I had met him, he didn’t know what his purpose in life was and it seemed to plague him. There were several times in our relationship that he had hovered around the idea of figuring that out on his own, but he had always come back to staying together. I didn’t know my purpose either, and while it nagged at me, it didn’t keep me up at night. Perhaps there were other reasons too. He always seemed to tell me everything on his mind, and he never told me anything else except that he felt he needed to go off on his own to find himself and his path. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do it together. But it didn’t seem to matter. He’d made up his mind to go find himself. Alone.
In all those years, we rarely ever had big differences or arguments. There were only two topics that were off-limits for him: God and marriage. That bothered me, but love sparkled in our lives to such an extent that I didn’t care enough to rock the boat. Spending my life with him was all that really mattered to me, and his love was my all. Living our lives together had been like being in a blissful dream-state every single day.
After he told me his news that night, and after endless sobbing, I went to sleep in his arms one last time. I had never experienced sadness like that in my life. I awoke the next morning and asked him if anything had changed. No. There’s no way to force love on anyone, and I knew I had no choice but to let him go. The feeling was tragic. That day, our paths split and we quietly and solemnly went different directions for good. I let the butterfly go, knowing it might never return. A mutual friend of ours later told me that when he found out that we had separated, he wondered if the sun would rise the next morning. We had been such a constant entity; no one had expected our separation either.
Several months later, I was in a relationship that should never have been. We should have remained good friends. That rebound into needing to rekindle love lasted almost three years. I clearly remember awakening one morning out of a very realistic-feeling dream. I was getting married, and the man I was marrying looked like my first love at 13, but felt like the guy I was currently in a relationship with. In the dream, I felt frantic. I had a frightful gnawing in the pit of my stomach and knew it was all wrong. When I woke up, I had an immediate need to end the relationship and be on my own. I was living with him and I remember standing at the sink doing dishes and thinking about the new freedom I felt about this sudden decision. I opened the newspaper to look for a place to rent of my own. I circled what seemed like a perfect fit and called the man leasing it. He said, “Hmmm. That’s funny. The ad wasn’t supposed to come out until tomorrow’s paper. Well, I guess you can come see it today.” It was a tiny, affordable room two blocks from the beach. I moved in immediately and built myself a bed frame. Even though I shared a bathroom with a stranger and cooked on a hot plate on the floor, it was perfect—sea air, bright sunshine, and enough room outside my door for my longboard.
My first week there, I sat down and wrote some guidelines for choosing my future mate, along with a promise to myself to not succumb to anything less. I had been in relationships for about 10 years, was 28 years old, and needed to be on my own for a time before even considering love again … unless I met someone with … and I proceeded to list qualities that were of utmost importance to me like honesty, reliability, and a nice physique (just being honest).
I tucked the list away in a drawer, intending to forget about it.
Neglect’s Toll on a Wife: Perfection’s Grip on My Husband’s Attention © 2023-2024 Lila Meadowbrook
