When we met, 18 years ago, I found a man with a set of values; Values I had not found in anyone before you. Not in the package, or form that you presented, anyway. You brought along cunning wit, a sharp mind, a silver tongue and an unshakable loyalty, all wrapped up in a good soul and a big heart. I fell in love with those values, and later, even when a romantic relationship between us did not work out, I still cherished you — for those values. Even if our feelings had changed, our friendship didn’t.
I never subscribed to the idea of severing all ties as soon as a relationship does not take the “happily-ever-after” form that people once envisioned it to. After investing precious years into getting to know each other in the most intimate ways, how could we; Why would we do something as cruel and as drastic like severing all ties? To do that would have meant that our acknowledgment of each other’s qualities was a conditional thing. That we appreciated the other, qualities, quirks and all, merely based on the label we gave our tie. As if love is merely a remittance paid for being in a relationship and that a relationship is merely a lease, and that all rights to admire and treasure each other were immediately lost as soon as the lease expired.
Heather Nova’s song, “Maybe An Angel,” for me, had your name written all over it. And during my darkest hours, when time and again I lost all faith in humanity, just the mere thought of you gave me hope, and will, to go on again, because I always believed, that if there was a force, or natural condition that was able to create you, not everything was lost and that perhaps soon, it would pull that majestic trick again, and your genome would spread like wildfire and the world would soon be a better place. Even if we hadn’t talked in months, just the thought of you being alive somewhere in the world, served as a grip. Something to hold on to.
Jung wrote that “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
You met your wife. And at first, I was thrilled. I could not be happier for you, for if there was a person to whom I wished all the happiness and true love in the world, that person would be you. But it was also that fortunate event that finally taught me the real meaning of Jung’s words.
Your marriage alchemized you. You had been transformed. And it may as well have been a chemical transformation, just as quick and sudden as the process of smashing high-speed nuclei into a lead to turn it into gold, for I saw the values I once treasured in you — those values that maintained my hope in the human race for all those years — fade away right in front of my very eyes.
The problem you see is not that you changed; But that you didn’t change into a new person, or a better version of you-you alchemized into another version of her. A replica of your wife. Fortunately, she’s a nice girl and a good person. I always liked her. But she doesn’t stand as the epitome of all those values that I once was ready to die for.
And as soon as I started to hear her words, her judgement, her opinions, her ways of thinking, delivered by your mouth more and more consistently, I shriveled inside, for overtime I spoke to you, I felt as if I was watching the performance of a ventriloquist. A ventriloquist that came to bring me the worst news! He came to tell me that not only your genome was not going to spread, but that your genome died.
And so today I lost faith again. Today I cry. Because this time I have no grip. Nothing to hold on to. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No reason to keep going on. For without the knowledge that somewhere out there the Good Human genome still roams this earth, to me, all is truly lost.
Goodbye, my lover. Goodbye, my friend.
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The post How Marriage Severs Ties: A Goodbye Letter From one Woman to Her Married Friend appeared first on The Good Men Project.
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