When I was 21, my spouse left for Afghanistan. He would be gone for one year. I was a Marine myself, in a reserve unit that wasn’t deploying, and was enrolled in college with plans to study all year. As he got onto the bus in a hot parking lot that summer in North Carolina, I shouldered the burden of military spouse and became busy passing time until he returned.
He left again for a year in Afghanistan when I went to work in Washington, DC. I distinctly remember falling asleep exhausted after walking through Capitol Hill all day, my business attire hanging cramped in a minuscule closet beside my Murphy bed, and having the vivid realization how alone I was. No sex, no one to call about the day, no one to wonder what sound my car was making, no one to live with me as I experienced pivotal career moves that I journaled about. We spoke once a week about life, and the time difference made sure that one of us was always confused and tired.
Eventually we divorced (for reasons outside of the military). After he gave our savings account away, again, to a mistress who “needed help” raising her children, I gave up for good. As I emerged as a divorcee at the age of 25, I had plenty of life lessons derived from the experience, most notably that love is not supposed to be exhausting.
Despite my best efforts, I started dating another military person. He was different though: we were actually a good match. After living beside each other in a shabby beach town to commuting the 45 minutes between his work and my medical school campus, we were engaged and planning our honeymoon in Argentina. He was my friend, our love was restorative and kind, I loved his family, and we had the same version of a perfect Saturday: really strong coffee, getting up at sunrise, and walking the beach.
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But then I finished medical school and “matched” into my surgical training program. We had met, dated, and lived in the South, and now we had plans to head back to the Northeast. As he transitioned out of the military, he wanted to live in Washington, DC. for career reasons. I was headed to New York for a five year training program. As we packed up our respective moving vans and lugged boxes into each new apartment, I prepared for something I had done before: long distance.
One year of this passed: phone calls (at least in the same time zone), long train rides or traffick-y drives along I-95 to visit for just a few days. I went to work outings alone, he went for his morning walks alone. We talked a lot, and FaceTimed when we had our evening beers after work. But one year later, after our wedding was entirely planned and everyone had tickets to Hawaii, he called it off. Again, there were many reasons, but one thing he kept repeating to me was “you are not here.”
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I was shocked to call off my relationship for many reasons, but one lingering and repeating thought was the concept of us as long distance. My mindset saw our relationship as this temporary break in being together. After my training years were done in half a decade, we could live wherever we wanted (which was true and liberating). But the temporary break was five years long. I had experience with sacrificial love thanks to the ex-husband of my young twenties. I spent over two years living as a “geo-bacherlorette” even though I was married. There are no perks of being in that kind of relationship (the person isn’t there), and there are also no perks of being single. It’s a strange suspensory state that the women of the world seem to easily adapt to: we love to give ourselves to something, even when the reward is very far away (it’s like a reflection of what motherhood and childrearing must be like to some extend).
So as my ex-fiance and I spoke way too much after our breakup, and still visited from time to time, I was waiting for him to realize that our value as a couple was stronger than a few hours in the car, that he was special enough for me to embrace this lengthy suspensory state. Was I not worth it for him? The thought knocked me to my knees each time I had it for about six months straight. Finally, I had the realization he must’ve had much earlier than me.
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We are alive right now. Some of us, particularly people who have extreme career goals (like doctors) where we live as students for a decade and have no money or freedom at our workplace well into our thirties, have “Extreme Delayed Gratification” syndrome. Almost everything we have done since we were eighteen and starting college has been for a goal so far off we can barely see it. We live for the future. I could justify sitting at my desk for hundreds of hours studying as my twenties passed me by because I wanted what was at the end of a long tunnel. My measly paycheck will one day be bigger. My small apartment will one day be a house. All of these things are true, so we buckle up and sit quietly and work to an almost indefinite ending. And sometimes we date normal people that understand a better balance between living for the moment and living for a goal that’s so far away and detailed that it’s bordering on delusional.
My ex wanted someone in his life. I was, by definition, not there. Cute phone calls and FaceTime dates are not actual interactions like spending physical time with someone. Phone calls work in the temporary, but I thought five years was temporary. He accurately saw that was actually a half-decade of our lives where we were living in a suspensory state and not actually living. So when he wanted a partner, and I felt invisible and not good enough, I was wrong to take it personally.
It begs the question: why do my male surgeon colleagues have women willing to tolerate their life the same way the male Marines had willing wives at home? Once again, (some of) us ladies see love with an element of sacrifice in it (which I still innately agree isn’t wrong). We love burdens and nurturing and the romanticized version of life where we await our loved ones. That mindset, coupled with the ultra-delayed-gratification syndrome some of us have, almost let me live a life where I was alone in many ways: in a relationship but not at all, waiting for some futuristic time to sit with someone for dinner again and have walks on Saturdays.
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Indefinite long distance might need to be a new deal breaker. We all want a love story that sounds compelling enough to wait for, to yearn for. But when I saw what my ex apparently saw (that life is now and not later, that wanting a companion is a reasonable ask, that phone calls don’t count as a relationship), long distance looks like a mangled way to be in love. It’s not degrading or devaluing to leave someone because they are not close by, it might instead be a reaffirmation or a commitment to ourselves to live a life that is not more fragmented and lonely and difficult than it needs to be.
As my editor’s note, there is much more to my break up than long distance. But it was a component he mentioned that I did not understand at first. I defaulted and saw the distance as a normal obstacle of love, and he saw it as another obstacle that shouldn’t exist. And he might have had a point.
Now when I remember the long summer nights I sat in my apartment as a 21 year old managing a joint bank account, sending care packages, and waiting for scrappy poor quality phone calls, it looks slightly romantic but also kind of pathetic. What young person puts their life entirely on hold for someone else? At least that guy was only gone for one year stints. But in my later relationship, he was gone for…ever? And that’s no way to live.
Thanks to Napoleon
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Taylor Grote on Unsplash
