The time in between.
I’ve spent pages of this blog talking about finding my Brent. I’ve talked about the beginning. I’ve talked about our first date. About our adventures. Our marriage. Our journey as parents. But interestingly enough, the one thing that I get inquiries for over and over again is the page in our history where we broke up. I’ve mentioned it several times on my blog but never really explained what happened. I think honestly, the reason this is most interesting to people is because sometimes it does the soul good to know that even happy couples had to overcome obstacles to get where they are.
We are all human. Feeling human things, learning human lessons, and trying somehow to find our way as individuals. as partners. as lovers despite (and because of) our humanness.
so here’s what happened with us.
Brent and I had been together for 3 months. We were still brand new. but we had moved fast. We’d barely spent a day apart since the beginning. We were intense, passionate, and spent more days than I should probably admit making out and skipping class and staring at each other while listening to Ryan Adams songs.
Everything I thought I had ever felt for him over those years of pinning for him had been completely true at this point. I had always held this undeniable desire for him and here I was living it.
but little by little, Brent began to change. He stopped holding my hand. He stopped texting me and calling me when I was away. He started to have a host of reasons why he couldn’t see me. I was so confused. and in my head, every friend who had said “You’re his rebound, Melissa. this is a bad idea” began to ring in my head.
By mid March, it was clearly obvious that his heart. or his head. or both were somewhere else. One night as I sat with a lump in my throat trying to work up the courage to ask him what was going on (and also wishing I could just ignore it a little longer and maybe it would just go away) there was a knock at his front door. It was his ex-girlfriend, L, whom he had just recently split from when we began to date. She had cooked or baked something (I can’t remember which) and she thought she’d drop some by for him. She didn’t know I was there. I’m not even sure if she knew we were dating. He stayed outside and talked to her for a few minutes while I sat there fighting back tears and putting the pieces together. When he returned, I pushed him to just tell me the truth.
and he did. He told me he still had feelings for her. That everything with them had ended so abruptly. That we’d moved so fast he’d hardly had time to deal with it. That he was still thinking about her. That he needed time to think.
I was brave. I didn’t cry. I told him I understood, we hugged, lingering a bit in each other’s arms and then I got in my car and left. I was pretty certain that was the end of us.
I cried. oh I nearly cried myself out of tears. I was truly heartbroken and it sounds silly to say that after dating someone for only a few months but really, I had loved him for so many years and had opened my heart so completely to him - without fear or any sort of barriers in those first few months that the realization that my time with him had come and gone made me physically sick.
I picked myself up and went to class. I spent time with my friends trying to keep my mind off of him. I kept my brave face on as much as I could. I couldn’t let anyone know how badly I was hurting because A. Everyone warned me this would happen and B. I was stubbornly prideful and didn’t want to admit it myself.
After a week or so, I went to stop in and visit with some mutual friends. Brent’s car was there. So was L’s. I kept driving. and driving and driving. Wondering if they were together was one thing, knowing they were together was another.
One weekend, very soon after that, Natasha and I decided to go to the beach. I needed to get out of town and stop feeling sorry for myself. We wore our hottest dresses, walked arm in arm down the streets of the Wilmington Riverfront, toasted drinks, laughed and relished in the attention we were getting together. We met a couple of Blue Angels pilots that were in town for an Airshow and barhopped with them. We had too much to drink and wound up sleeping on a friend’s couch. I’ll be honest, that night, I didn’t think about him much at all - I knew partying wasn’t the answer to getting over him, but that weekend, it’s what I needed.
One day, in a moment of weakness, I made up an excuse why I needed to stop by Brent’s house. (To pick up a sweater I left there, maybe? I can’t remember). We stood in his backyard. I bounced awkwardly from toe to toe. It was a good, light hearted conversation. Despite that, I remember I was on the verge of crying the entire time.
Several weeks later I got a call from Brent. He said he had to see me immediately. By now, I was doing better. I was feeling better and sure as hell wasn’t going to just roll over and say ok just because he wanted to see me. I told him I was busy (even though I wanted nothing more in the whole world than to see him).
Our mutual friends held a dinner. I knew he’d be there. All of my girlfriends went and I sent them with an excuse as to why I was absent. I sat at home and ate spaghetti-os instead. He continued to call and one day, as I sat reading a book in a field (ah, those blissful summer days before the real world called) I told him where I was.
He showed up soon after and told me that out of the blue one evening that it struck him like a bolt of lightening that he was in love with me. He told me he realized he was making the biggest mistake of his life if he let me get away. That what he’d felt for me had confused him and scared him. He had been with L, at a lake house a few hours from Raleigh and all he wanted to do was to get back and find me and make this right.
I told him he broke my heart. I told him I was finally doing better. I told him he’d proven everyone right when he made me his rebound. I told him I didn’t trust him.
He said he’d prove it to me and over the next weeks, he wrote songs about his love for me, called, texted, showed up wherever I was. He let me take my anger at being hurt out at him. When I called him an asshole after too many beers and jammed my finger in his chest and said “I hate you for breaking my heart.” He just listened. and apologized. and promised me that he would never leave me again.
I finally told him that I had always loved him and I might as well stop pretending that I didn’t. I also told him that this was it. That I was never going to be in a relationship where we break up and get back together and break up again and on and on. If he really meant what he said, then this was his one and only second chance.
And eventually, we found our way back to being madly in love with one another. To being inseparable and crazy, cant-get-enough of you again.
It took us awhile, honestly. I had trust issues with him for a long time. There was a time when the mere mention of L’s name put a lump in my throat. When running into her would leave me sobbing in the bathroom, convinced he was going to change his mind again and leave me.
Nothing fixed that except time. And allowing him to prove it. And not holding it over his head. and coming to the conclusion that I am willing to put aside the fear of a “what-if” broken heart in order to move on and fully enjoy being in love with him. By the time he asked me to marry him and be his wife, my heart was fully healed. I knew where he stood. I knew where I stood. I knew he was my future.
And now, 6 years later. I’m actually friends with L. I think it started with a mutual curiosity about one another but resulted in the discovering that Brent has superb taste in women. She and I are incredibly different and yet, we’ve found we have a lot in common. More than anything, over time I’ve learned to appreciate her for what she taught Brent about love and relationships. In understanding why he loved her, I’ve been able to understand why he needed closure and why he struggled and also why he loves me too.
So there you go. The extremely long winded version of the time we broke up. the time between Happily and Ever After. It doesn’t always work out this way - but I’m proof that sometimes, it does.
(One of our first photos - Taken by Natasha at the farm during my favorite summer)
Love,
M
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