FYI
Tad and I broke up.
I wasn’t going to talk about it here, but then I realized that it would come up eventually. And if I try to mention it as a quick aside in the future, people will freak out and then worry, and then I’ll have to explain the details in individual emails so that they know it’s all okay.
Normally, in my mind, one year of dating would be way too soon in a relationship to consider marriage or living together or any of that. To consider “the future”, I mean. But when you’ve been dating someone for a year and everything’s going fine, and then one of you has to go away for a year, that screws up the timeline. If people were asking you about your long-term plans before, they’re really going to want to know what your plans are once one of you has gone away. And you can always say, “I don’t know yet,” but then you can’t help but wondering, “Yeah – what are my plans?”
You can play wait-and-see for a year, but if you begin to suspect that there are no long-term plans – no “future” for your relationship – then you’ll start to wonder what exactly it is that you’re waiting to see. And if other opportunities come up, you’ll have to wonder how long you’ll continue to let them pass you by.
Unfortunately, circumstances have forced us to consider the “future” way too soon, instead of just continuing to have fun.
And since we aren’t planning to get married, there’s really no use playing wait-and-see for a year or more. Or, at least, that’s what we’ve come up with.
We’re still friends. We will always cherish the time we spent together. We wish each other the best.
Everything’s going to be okay.
