Trip to Memory Lane reminds me some relationships deserve to die

By David McElroy · June 7, 2018

It was late Thursday evening and I was on the way back from showing a house to someone in the county south of Birmingham. On the way back, a traffic problem on I-65 meant I was routed through a suburb where I haven’t been in years. I found myself just a few blocks from the home of a woman I once dated — and I spent the next hour or so thinking about the past again.

I found myself wondering what I’d say to her if I ran into this woman in her neighborhood. What do you say to someone who you used to know intimately and then the relationship ends with an ugly screaming halt, leaving two people strangers in the future?

I hadn’t thought seriously about her in years, but I realized tonight that I wouldn’t want to rehash the past if I talked with her. I was very unhappy with the way our relationship ended, but I had given her reasons to be unhappy with me. I’ve blamed her for how things ended, but where do you draw the line? Do you mark the fault at how she handled things at the end? Or do you go back to my mistakes and blame me for creating the problems?

I suddenly realized it didn’t matter. I was grateful that she once loved me, but I was equally grateful that the relationship ended. Some relationships between two decent people need to end — and this had been one of them.

She was tall and young and beautiful. She still moved with the easy grace and confidence of the athlete she had been in high school, where she had played multiple sports but had excelled on the tennis team. She was smart and funny and talented. She had grown up in Iowa and gone to college in Nebraska. She was teaching at a rural school in Nebraska — a modern-day one-room schoolhouse — when we met.

She was also completely wrong for me. Our personalities were different in ways that were hard to resolve. Although she was eager to learn, we had very different intellectual backgrounds. It ended up being a relationship of unequals. I had the upper hand — and I wasn’t fair to her after that became clear.

She took a big chance on me by moving here. I’ll always admire her courage for picking up what she had and moving 1,300 miles — to a place where she knew nobody but me — in the hopes of me choosing her for life.

If I had done the right thing, I would have ended the relationship very early. In fact, I did end things — several times — but she was always there waiting for me when I needed someone. I dated another woman for a year and almost married her, but when I backed out of marrying that woman, this one was still waiting and we dated. I was too weak to end things for good. I was too selfish to let her know she wasn’t ever going to be what I needed. She was too convenient as a backup plan.

By the time she walked away from me — with a lot of hurt and anger — I was left all alone and wanted her back. It was wise that she stayed away. As much as I admire about her and as much as I enjoyed her company much of the time, I was never what she needed — and she was never what I needed.

Things got ugly at the end. I never even returned to her house to pick up the things of mine which I had left there. I thought about that — and I thought about helping her pick out that house to buy — when I drove within half a mile of it this evening.

If I were to talk with her now, I wouldn’t talk with her about any of that. I would talk with her about how much I appreciated the time she spent with me. I would tell her how much I admire some of her wonderful qualities. And I would tell her how happy I am that she’s married and happy with someone else.

After all this time, I don’t have anything bad to say. I would apologize for the mistakes I made. I might even talk to her about ways in which I’ve grown emotionally. But I wouldn’t really be interested in talking about the mistakes she made.

That was a relationship which she worked really hard for several years to nurture. She wanted to marry me and I wanted to marry someone. She was there in case there was no one better — but I could never admit that to her.

It was a relationship that needed to die.

I’ve learned a lot from every relationship I’ve ever had with a woman. Some taught me that I wasn’t as mature as I had thought I was. Some taught me that love is a nebulous thing that has to be nurtured in regular ways. One taught me that you sometimes have to be willing to take a huge risk for a huge gain — that risk and reward often come together. And one taught me that someone can go from saying, “I love you,” and talking about your future together one day to pulling away the next day — with absolutely no explanation.

I’ve learned from all of them. Even though I could come up with grievances with any of them — and most of them could name grievances against me — I find myself uninterested in any of that. I’m more interested in the fact that I’ve been able to share love and good times with some amazing women.

There’s at least one I would still happily know again and love again. Even with that one, I have serious questions because of trust she destroyed. But if you love someone — and other intangible things match between two people — trust can sometimes be restored and love can bloom again. It doesn’t often happen, but love is hard to kill.

On the other hand, some relationships are over long before two people admit it and long before the two people walk away from one another. Those relationships need to end, because there’s better love — a better match — waiting somewhere for both people.

When I drove through her neighborhood today, my biggest regret — for both of us — is that I didn’t end things long before I did. It would have been the kindest thing for both of us.

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