"It makes me that much wiser..."

After over three years, Secondary and I have parted ways. It was not because of Primary. It was because of a new person who walked into his life some ten weeks ago. Yes, Secondary ended our relationship for someone he just met. Let that sink in for a minute.

It is not completely his fault. Our relationship had already devolved into toxicity. The new person was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I imagine that I will be thanking her (while simultaneously feeling pity) in the near future.

So, I found this article about toxic relationships to help me process. I could go through it point by point, but it really explains just about everything that was wrong with our relationship. I think I am going to highlight a couple of things that stood out to me.

3. They have very few friends outside the relationship. 

I think because we did not live together and we were in a secondary relationship, this did not precisely apply to both of us. As a friend of mine is more than happy to remind me, I tend to get caught up in my romantic relationships and neglect my friendships. This is something I am trying to work on. That said, I am fortunate to have wonderful friends in my life. They have been nothing but supportive and because I have a number of them I am not dumping all of my shit on only one or two people. 

As far as I am aware, Secondary has two friends in the area (since I no longer count myself among them). One of those friends (who is also the woman he dumped me for) is leaving in the next week. One thing that I have realized is that I am no longer responsible for making sure he feels supported. It is like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I hope his other friend has their boundaries firmly in place, because they are about to be asked to provide a lot of emotional support with little relief. 

9. They try to control each other’s actions. 

This was a problem when we first started dating. Secondary liked to have access to all the data. He wanted to share location and I think he knew my routine better than I did. He wanted to know my work schedule and calendar sharing was a frequent argument. This level of data sharing stopped when he found out it cuts both ways.  Location sharing makes it very difficult to lie about what he was doing when I could see where he had been. I won't go into whether or not sharing location is healthy behavior. My husband and I share our location and it makes life simpler. On the other hand, I usually only use his location to determine when I should start cooking. I don't check it very often.

Data sharing aside, I never felt like Secondary wanted to control my actions. I don't know how he feels about the topic. 

The rest of the points made in the article seem relatively accurate to me. I have known that this relationship was toxic for a long time. I had just hoped that we could fix it. In retrospect, I should have cut bait months ago. 

The hardest part is dealing with trappings of a three year relationship being over. There are the habits and rituals that went with it. As I was making dinner last night, I realized that Secondary will never walk in to the house and sit down to a meal waiting for him. We won't walk my dog together. We won't watch Westworld while eating ice cream. He won't be sitting in my room wearing the bathrobe I picked up at IKEA. I can't tell him about the design concept I have for my classroom. It may have been a toxic relationship, but I will miss him. I think the hardest part of any break up is the little things that you shared only with each other.

I plan to get rid of a lot of those trappings in the next week and make new habits. 

I want to blame the new person for ending our relationship. I know that is not the case. My relationship with Secondary ended a long time ago and I should have been the one to walk away. I am not blaming myself. I am looking at this process as a way to explore what gets me into these relationships and keeps me in them. That is my purpose of this blog, is to process.

One of my friends mentioned the possibility of Secondary and I finding a friendship at some point in the future. I have become friends with a number of my ex-boyfriends and I value those relationships. I have introduced them to people that they marry and a couple of my exes were responsible for getting my husband and me together.

I will not say never. However, it's hard to consider friendship with someone who treated my feelings with such disdain. I can't imagine that I could ever manage more than bare civility. I wouldn't trust him to not use me again. I suppose time will tell.

Today's song came up on Spotify as I was finishing this post. While not perfectly accurate today, I think this is the space I should move into.