The Saga, Part Deux

...So (this story gets far too long) I go to the barbecue. We spend the whole night riveted to one another. I study her book collection. I memorize the names of her cats. Over the next weeks we invent reasons to see each other more. Things are busy (because I am getting married. To someone else) but I always manage to make time to see her.

Three months later she comes to the wedding, after losing the invitation 3 times, and me stubbornly re-sending it three times (hey! We had to order in units of 50, so we had, like, 48 extras!) At the wedding, gf is wasted, which I should add is totally unlike her. She comes late and misses the ceremony. I am disappointed when I don't see her at first, but happy when she appears later. We literally dance around each other the whole night.

And after that is all over, she does not speak to me for weeks. Finally I call her and say, "Why do I feel like we are fighting?" She hangs up on me.

I call her back. She hangs up on me.

I call her back. She says, "I can't be your friend. I'm in love with you." And hangs up on me.

This is perhaps one of the only moments in my life when I could accurately be described as stupefied. And at the same time everything falls into place. (I should explain that as a born-and-bred WASP, I excel at compartmentalization. It's really an art-form. This is how I slept with my girlfriends from the age of 16, yet did not realize I was gay till 26. For me, two and two are usually just two and two until someone comes along and points out the really freakin' obvious.)

Let me make it terribly clear that I loved and still love my ex-wife. I just never knew what it was to be in love until it hit me upside the head three weeks after my wedding to the wrong woman. Doh!

So what followed for me was a year of guilt and self-loathing and self-recrimination and second-thoughts and doubts and most mornings I could barely get out of bed to face another day of what felt like living a lie, living in limbo.

It was awful and wretched and gut-wrenching, but after a year of therapy and daily crying and endless conversations (mostly with myself, as I was too shame- and guilt-ridden even to talk to friends about it) I finally ended things with my ex, when I could be at ease with the idea that whatever happened with me and gf, it was not fair for me to be married to my ex knowing that what I wanted was not to be found with her. It was not fair to use her because I was afraid to be alone, or because I thought she was the best offer I could get or because it was simply more comfortable day by day to stay than the risk going. When I was utterly resolved in that, I walked away.

Some time later I started seeing gf. There was no pretense of "casual" or "taking it slow", though I am the more practical part of our pairing, and I insist on rational timelines. I will not move in until a year has gone by, even though we are consulting right now with an architect about renovating her apartment. I will not even consider starting insemination until we have lived together at least six months. This latter is a compromise between my desire not to rush into it and the reality of my aging ova.

Ex and I are friends, For Real Friends. I still love her and care about her deeply. It still pains me that I hurt her but I am also beginning to see signs that she, too, might actually see that this is better for both of us.

And so. gf and I continue, this painful and tangled past as much a part of us as the enduring (and growing) love and awe we have for each other.