Mr. W and I had a talk last nite and we decided to see a lot less of each other. At first it felt nauseatingly like slitting the throat of the honeymoon stage and ending it early, forcibly. I tend to do stuff like that because I’m sensitive to even minute changes. You’ve got something going on from 6-7? Okay, I’m not even going over at all that day then. Touch a snail’s antennae and it recoils immediately and completely into its shell. But Mr. W made a good point about his character. The only time in the recent past that I’d been comfortable doing my own thing was when I was single. It’s such a rarity that I can truly enjoy being self-indulgent that I had a really hard time giving up the singledom. However, what’s been unique in this relationship is that even if I wanted to travel around the world on foot by myself, Mr. W would encourage me to do it and although I would miss him, I’d know that while I was away, he would not be off somewhere betraying me. This may be a blessing in disguise. This may be the first time I could be comfortable being a whole person and not just “the girlfriend” while in a relationship.

Altho, on the flip side of the coin, and maybe this is just separation anxiety talking, I have known people in relationships that, unless it came out verbally somehow, you’d never know they were in a relationship. A person would come to events solo, anytime you ask if they’re available to hang out, they are, without having to check with anyone or anything first. People who know about the significant other would ask what the other half were doing, and the other half’s always out doing something totally separate and social. And people would whisper, “Why are they even together? They spend like no time together.” And eventually, this strange, estranged couple would break up, and everyone would nod at the predictability and say that they saw it coming. “There was no passion there, they didn’t even hang out, it was like they weren’t even friends.”

And yet, there is something nice about how last week, there was an event going on that I was deciding whether to attend, and a married friend had joked, “Did you get your hall pass?” I’d scoffed. Hall pass. I’d be lucky if he didn’t drag me there himself, kick me out of the car and take off without me, shouting something about strengthening my social network out the window.

Gosh, it really sounds like he doesn’t care to be around me, huh? Well, I guess I can’t keep up the last 4 months forever, accepting every invitation to go running over there, being home only half an hour a day to get ready for work, neglecting jujitsu and friends and bingo and stuff. And there’s stuff that he wants to do, too, that he’d never told me about until last nite. I used to ask him what he’d be doing on the weekend if he weren’t attending one of my friends’ events with me. He would say nothing, running errands, same stuff, except doing it alone. That was really nice of him to say that so that I wouldn’t feel like I was taking him away from more important things. It was so easy to just go with his flow and get comfortable. I guess the timing of this is right. It was starting to feel unhealthy last week when my cousin Jennifer suggested, “Make yourself happy,” and I couldn’t.