You Okay, Honey?

I’m afraid so.

I'm going through a breakup.

A big breakup.

I've been with this person since I was 20 years old. I am now 33. You cover a lot of emotional distance during those formative years, and being bound to one person makes them, for better or worse, a part of you.

So, to be suddenly without them is deeply disorienting, to say the least.

As I navigate the muddy waters of single life for the first time as an adult, I find myself deriving meaning from seemingly mundane things. Seeing a lonely, discarded shoe prompts a sappy yet egotistical thought: “That shoe is me. Alone and forgotten.” Horrible! I seek comfort in rewatching familiar TV shows, but in light of my current situation, I’m receiving new insights from things I’ve seen a hundred times before. Rory has always been awful, but after what she did to Lindsay, she is irredeemable. Even the lightest content conceals little daggers. When I hear Albert from The Birdcage say, “Indifference is the most awful thing in the world, Armand,” I feel the urge to pop a Pirin tablet.

God, heartbreak is making me boring.

Tired from all the self-actualization, I’ve resorted to my greatest comfort and biggest weakness: doom-scrolling for hours on TikTok. Of course, the algorithm knows I’m going through a breakup, and I’m fed video after video of relationship gurus discussing every aspect of the end of a relationship. The content ranges from soft-spoken therapists explaining attachment theory to chaotic influencers yelling at you to DUMP HIM!! It’s overwhelming most of the time, but comforting some of the time. Most of the information shared is nothing revolutionary, but it feels nice to feel understood, even if it’s not by your husband, but rather strangers on the internet.

“You need to fall back in love with yourself,” laments another gorgeous Gen Z-er with a slicked-back bun. I wonder what kind of man hurt her. Did she see his faults right away and try to ignore them? Did he blindside her after lulling her into a false sense of security? Did he have an affair?

I think about her advice. It’s cliché and pretty general, but not bad, I guess.

But I never fell out of love with myself.

Self-love is carrying me through this. Self-love is why I could never take this man back, not that he’s trying to win me back or anything. Self-love is keeping me from comparing myself to some random 20-something who I know has much less to offer than me in nearly every way. Self-love is something I had been working on for years in therapy, but you never know how badly you need it until you confront something like this.

When people learn that your partner had an affair, they often say, “This has nothing to do with you.”

I never really considered that it could.

In the nearly 13 years of my relationship, I never stopped learning about myself. I picked up hobbies, built communities, indulged interests, developed my tastes, tried new things, and met new people. I stayed out all night doing comedy in basements and joined a knitting group where I was the youngest member by 30 years. I volunteered at a suicide hotline and shot network commercials. I became a death doula, wrote plays, and grew up. I’ve traveled, built friendships, made art, and done a million other things.

I know I am interesting. Smart. Empathetic. A good friend. A great spouse. I believed the same for him until recently.

Although so much of my life and time had become intertwined with his, I developed an unshakeable sense of self. And thank god. I don’t believe he can say the same, and to be so unmoored in both your relationship and your own identity would be excruciating. In that respect, I have empathy for him. I can’t imagine dealing with the end of a marriage and the beginning of an identity crisis.

Sometimes I cringe to think about how this man will proceed in life, armed only with what I bestowed upon him, using it to sleep with random recent BFA grads who are impressed by his deeply middling career. No, he’s not just an emotionally unavailable aging musical theatre actor! He’s an emotionally unavailable aging musical theatre actor who listens to Adrienne Lenker! He read Song of Achilles! He goes to therapy! Well, yes, he does. But only to learn therapy terms better to manipulate you with, my dear. But you’re welcome, because all of those positive things came about through my influence, so enjoy the fruits of my 13 years of labor!

We don’t talk much anymore, at his request. He needs “time and space” to figure out how he feels about things, although it is clear that what the “time and space” actually affords him is distance from his biggest trigger: me. When we do talk, he doesn’t ask much about my feelings. He tries to steer the conversation toward less turbulent topics, like asking about my plans and what I want to do now. The future is much easier for us to discuss rather than the recent past. He likes to ask where I will be living, and how I plan on “moving on” from all this.

I don’t know how I feel about the term “moving on,” but I do know the world didn’t stop spinning when he left me.

I’m doing what I’ve always done. Being with friends. Working. Writing. Seeing art and making art. Auditioning, occasionally. Since he left me, I signed with a new literary agent. I was put on a writing retainer. I’m taking meetings and making plans. I am also crying a lot, but to quote some singer, I can do it with a broken heart.

It is true that I have never fallen out of love with myself, but maybe I stopped pursuing her in the way she deserves. That happens in even the strongest of long-term relationships. You get complacent, lazy. You know the love is there, even if the effort isn’t. And it’s time to step it up again.

Yuck. Now who sounds cliché?

So for anyone reading (including perhaps the person I am still currently married to) here are my future plans. I am continuing to pursue the most important relationship of my life: the one I have with myself.