Endings

I’m sitting on a single bed, in a small apartment on the south coast of France. It’s 11:16pm on the night of Oct 29th, 2008. I’m wearing only a pair of those cut-off sweat pants shorts, they’re grey. I’m in the dark, though I can see the lights of other apartment buildings out past the balcony. It’s warm, and the thunder and lightning only stopped about an hour ago. My laptop is in front of me, and I’m listening to some music with my ear-buds. I’m drafting a break-up letter to my boyfriend.


I’m living in France for a year and everything is going smoothly except for my long distance relationship with G. It’s hard to figure out how everything went down the tubes like it has. It’s so strange how you can feel so perfectly one with a person, and then watch as things slowly morph and fall apart until you don’t really know why you’re in this relationship anymore. Sure you have social pressures, and concern for the other party’s feelings even, but you’re not getting anything out of it anymore. No fulfillment or satisfaction or joy. It sucks.

G and I had the most wonderful whirlwind summer romance. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life, and I am not exaggerating. I’d wanted to experience something like that for as long as I’ve identified as gay, and then, starting in June, it happened. I fell in love. It was more than I ever could have dreamed of. Every sappy love song suddenly had meaning. All of the stereotypes and clichés about love were suddenly real to me. I was in love and it was bliss.

Having a boyfriend was something new to both of us. We’d both fooled around with guys before, and he’d been in a semi-relationship that hadn’t lasted 8 days, but neither of us had ever gone steady with someone. We were feeling our way along, but we were doing it together, surrounded by very supportive friends who were overjoyed to see us find someone. His friends loved me, and my friends loved him. We made so much progress together! He took me to a party at the shore, with strangers present, as his date. We kissed on the beach by moonlight and held hands walking back through the crowd. He introduced me to his family, and I introduced him to mine. We ate meals at each other’s houses, with each other’s parents. We watched movies curled up on the sofas at both of our houses, with parents home. We spent nights together in each other’s bedrooms. I kissed him goodbye in my driveway at noon. We went on a five day long road trip. We camped outside a friend’s cottage. We had sex all the time. We called each other boyfriend. We said I love you to one another. IT WAS AMAZING. Exhilaration does not approach how I was feeling. It was the best experience of my life.

But we knew from the start that I was going away for a year, and as much as i loved him, I was not sacrificing this year in France in order to stay with him. Both myself and my parents had put too much effort and money into planning for it, aside from the fact that it was something I’d wanted to do for years and years. To live away, in a city, independently, to travel, to speak French every day, to immerse myself in a foreign culture, to meet people, to do things I would never do otherwise, to learn, to grow, to find myself. All of that. Of course, G was supportive, and of course we decided to have a long distance relationship. We loved each other beyond anything we thought possible, so of course we were going to make this work until such time that I would come back, the end of May. Of course, Sept. 2009 I was starting law school in a province where G would not be, because he was in a program in our home province that wouldn’t finish until June 2010. But of course, through love tinted glasses, anything, absolutely anything, is possible. All you need is love.

Or so we thought, doubtless repeating the mistake of countless young couples in the past, who thought that the love they had for each other would somehow carry the day over huge obstacles. And perhaps if G and I were actually a better match, it would have. But we weren’t, and it didn’t. The problems started almost immediately in September.


I arrived in Strasbourg, France, on September first. It was to be my home for the next 9 months. My apartment got set up quickly, internet taking a bit longer. My younger sister, Beth, also in Strasbourg but in a different quarter, had internet, so I was able to use hers for the first few weeks. The first hurdle G and I had to try to clear was simply communication. There are so many facets to why G and I are breaking up it’s hard to isolate them all. Of course, each of us has flaws, and one of mine is sheer laziness. I’m also very easy-going, which might be related to that, but I’m not sure. G wanted us to communicate every day via Skype (so talking, with video) at a set time. He also wanted regular emails. He also used my facebook wall to say I love you all the time. I’ve also been featured 100% of the time since I left as the subject of his facebook status. A lot of the facebook stuff struck me as overkill, and something about it being in such a public forum turned me off, too. Something else we’d done over the summer was put our relationship on facebook, ex “Robert is in a relationship with ” on my page. A public proclamation of our relationship. Seemed reasonable at the time, and I in fact still think it is, though I could’ve lived without it. For G, it was important. In effect it outed me on facebook, too, which I thought of as further progress made due to our relationship. A positive. Anyway, so G wanted all that communication. I knew that my schedule was variable, and frankly, I didn’t want to be tied down to a specific Skype time every day. I could stand not talking to him for a day if it didn’t work out. We’d be emailing every day anyway. My counter proposal was yes, every day communication, but not a scheduled talking time everyday – that, in my mind, restricted both of us in terms of our social lives. He also wanted me to let him know if I couldn’t talk to him at that prearranged time some time through the day via internet. This also presented a problem for me, just in terms of logistics. What if i only learned I couldn’t make it when i was eating an evening meal with friends because we spontaneously decided to go out somewhere. You just meet these three girls from Germany, they’re awesome and they want to keep the conversation going at a nearby pub, everyone’s going. But I have to miss it to go home and talk to my boyfriend on Skype. Or go home to tell him that I’m going out to a bar, but my apartment is 40 minutes away there and back. It’s just impractical.

So let’s look at this issue deeper. One might say that I was being lazy, and that I should’ve realized that if I wanted to be in a long distance relationship, if i was serious about it, and if i respected G, I would of course agree to his proposal re communication arrangements. What was really going through my mind when I protested against this? Talking to him on Skype was nice, of course, but as much as it was nice, I knew I didn’t want to do it every night. In addition to the fact that I didn’t want to be tied down like that. I t was such a restriction on my freedom. Is that what it means to be in a long distance relationship, or a relationship at all? Yes? Then maybe I just wasn’t mature enough for either, or well suited, or whatever. But you see, i had no frame of reference. I didn’t even have anyone to talk to at the moment about whether this was normal or not, what I should compromise on, and what I shouldn’t. What was reasonable? I think that I’m a reasonable person with reasonable wants/needs. But I assumed the same about G. And when he reacts in a non-reasonable way to something I think is reasonable, like how he felt hurt by the fact that i didn’t want to talk to him as much as he seemed to want to talk to me, then who is actually being reasonable? Who knows! If you’re confident in yourself, it’s you. If not, it’s him, and you compromise. But a lot of this relationship has felt like it’s proceeded in a bubble where neither of us really seems to know what we should or should not take a stand on, or compromise over.

He compromised first, and we didn’t adopt the regular talking time. But gradually, he became more and more stressed out. And I think it basically came down to him wanting to talk to me every day, and me not caring one way or the other, thus making no extra effort to make it happen. I assumed he would want what i wanted, and he assumed i would want what he wanted. He rearranged his entire life around being at his laptop, at home in the evenings, hoping I would call. I structured, or non structured or whatever, my life around school, friends, whatever, but always leaving space to talk to G now and then, if he happened to be home, and sending him random emails. This was too much for him (or rather, not enough). The only reason it seemed to be working out so well to me, because i was just popping online randomly when i was home and in the mood to talk, and he was usually there, was because he was doing everything possible to be at his computer at home whenever i might come online to talk. We had a fight, and then I compromised, because it seemed that he simply couldn’t stand it any other way. So we then adopted the, what I felt was, restrictive calling every night at the same time, and trying to let him know whenever it wouldn’t work. This basically meant having to tell him my schedule every day, and every day it changed. I wasn’t happy, and he wished I would just want this to be the arrangement.


As we were negotiating that issue, I started to make more and more friends in Strasbourg, wonderful people, who i of course wanted to spend time with, and do things with. Some of them were French, some Canadian, some American, and then more from lots of other countries. I was exploring the city, I was getting into routines of buying food and cooking, and eating at cafeterias, and joining the gym and judo and shopping and etc etc. All of this taking me farther away from G. A guy in a few of my classes at the university is gay. We’ll call him M. We both came out to each other, it was awesome. He’s really nice, kind of cute, short, Mexican, very sweet and sincere, a bit demanding as a friend. He wants you to be his best friend right off the bat. I don’t warm to people quite that fast, so it took a while for me. But it was nice to have made a gay friend over here. G was not happy, and automatically disliked him. He thought I was spending too much time with him. One time I had M over to study with me at my place. G thought this was inappropriate. I couldn’t understand why he felt the way he did about this. To me, M was just another friend, though one who was gay, so we could talk about certain things more openly, G being one of them, M’s relationships another. G could’ve gone and made friends with who ever he wanted, I didn’t care, the more friends the better - maybe it’d give him something else to do rather than always waiting for me by the phone (laptop).

Why did/do i feel the way i did/do about this? In our arguments, I always frame it in terms of trust. I trust that G won’t cheat on me, so he can do whatever he wants with his time and life and energy, I won’t mind because I know he’ll be faithful. And he seeks to control my behaviour because he doesn’t trust me not to cheat on him. Simple and logical. But why am I not concerned that he won’t cheat on me? Shouldn’t I be? As he always says in our arguments and which I always parry with a trust reply, everyone makes mistakes, humans are fallible creatures. G told me 2 or 3 times that if i ever cheated on him he’d end the relationship right away. He said he could never forgive me. That he could never look me in the eye again, never trust me again. I, frankly, had never even thought about him cheating on me until he brought it up. Hadn’t even crossed my mind. So, in an effort to try to see his perspective, I gave it some thought. How would I feel if he fooled around with another guy while I was in France? It was hard to say. I guess I would be angry. Right? That’s what people feel when they get cheated on. Angry. Betrayed. But seriously, I couldn’t summon up any of those feelings. Does him having sex with someone else make him not love me? I don’t think so. I’ve had meaningless sex plenty of times. It has nothing to do with who or how i love someone. So I guess in my mind, him having sex with someone else is not in and of itself a betrayal, or at least, it’s not an emotional one. It might be a technical one, in the case that we both agreed to be monogamous and then he wasn’t. But would I feel wounded? Scarred? No, I don’t think so. Of course, this assumes that he still loves me, which I couldn’t imagine him not. Of course he’ll always love me, this was never in doubt. Maybe I’d feel differently if it wasn’t G, in whom I have the utmost confidence that he is trustworthy. If he had sex with someone else and told me that he didn’t love them, that he loved me, and if everything still worked, then I wouldn’t be hurt. But would I want an apology? Yes? Why? I don’t know? I get quite unsure of myself here. Of course, then all these practicalities come up, like I don’t want to catch something from him that he caught from some other guy. Why would he be having sex with other people? I suppose just for the fun of it. Sex is fun. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Maybe not. I don’t know. See, the farther I go down this path the less sure of anything I am. Sex and love are not linked in my mind, or at least, not necessarily. So why then is sex with another person a betrayal? I’ve had meaningless sex. Lots of people have. And if you think that sex is really meaningless, then if your partner has meaningless sex with someone else when they’re in a relationship with you, what does it mean? Nothing? Because it should mean nothing, because it was meaningless, and if they say it was meaningless then you have to believe it was because you have to trust them because you’re in a relationship with them. And if you can’t trust them then you can’t be in the relationship. Now I’m just using logic that might have no grounding in reality. Relationships are about people’s feelings and emotions and all of that isn’t rational at all. So basically “I don’t know” is the answer to a lot of these questions that I pose to myself. But at the start of this whole thing is the fact that I didn’t feel threatened, or potentially betrayed, by any hypothetical cheating on the part of G on me. This was aside from that fact that I trusted him not to fool around with anyone else, simply because he said he wouldn’t, and I trust him. But he might as well be promising he wouldn’t wear some shirt i didn’t like for the year i was gone for the amount of emotional good it did me. Him cheating was a non issue for me, both because i didn’t think it would happen, and because if it did i couldn’t imagine it hurting me that much. Maybe it would hurt me if it happened, because I would then think it meant he didn’t love me, or because of the particular circumstance of that situation, or something... I don’t know.

Anyway! So G was paranoid of M and i cheating. He said, it’s not that i don’t trust you, it’s that i don’t trust other people. Which was a ridiculous statement to me, it takes two people to cheat. He didn’t want me going to gay bars. Let alone a gay bar with M. I thought this was stupid as well. I love to dance, and I love dance music, and gay bars often have amazing music. Plus my friends here are gay-friendly, they want to go to gay bars! But this was a huge issue for G. So I compromised one night and didn’t go with the crowd because they might’ve been going to a gay bar. This left a bitter taste in my mouth. I told G I was giving in only because i knew it would bug him / hurt him / worry him if i went, and not because i agreed with any of his rationales.

The pools in Strasbourg require you to wear speedos or some other similar tight fitting swim suit, not the shorts like ones that I own. M swims every day and would love for me to come with him sometime. I see this as an opportunity to exercise with someone, and so of course i should take him up on it. Plus he’s my friend, i think it’d be fun. G was completely against me going swimming with him. Let alone the locker room! He was aghast that M would see me in such an exposed state. I was mystified about this, and it took me a while to clue in to how jealous G really was. Of a completely innocent activity with a completely innocent person. I drew the line, and said i’ve had it with curtailing my behaviour to satisfy his paranoid delusions. Huge fight ensued and we almost broke up. This issue simmered for part of Sept and then into Oct. G flew over to London, England, to see me, and I flew there to see him. We spent 5 days together. At the end, this issue exploded – we had a huge fight, and the relationship almost ended. I wasn’t compromising on this issue. I refused to not do things that he thought were inappropriate because they were in actuality completely reasonable. The fight was massive, but in the end he gave in and said he was being an idiot and that he didn’t want to lose me over this.

G doesn’t know the concept of money. He spent that enormous sum to come and see me in mid October. He was already planning on coming to see me in February for a week or so during his spring break. Last week he decided to come and see me in Strasbourg in the days leading up to Christmas right after his exams are done. This strikes me as spending too much money. He says that he would spend anything to come and spend one day with me. It’s hard to argue against this, because protesting makes it seem like I don’t love him as much as he loves me, and it doesn’t really get across my concerns about the money. G is doing all of his university career on student loans, and his family is not wealthy at all. He’s got an apartment in the city. He’s leasing a car. He goes out to eat fairly frequently to me, and he goes out drinking now and then too. Normal activities and purchases all, but when taken together, he’s spending a lot of money. And THEN he decides to take at least three mini trips to Europe in one school year. I wasn’t even planning on going home for Christmas because of the cost! But like I said, when i argue this, he tells me to put it from my mind. His program, dentistry, will lead to a lucrative career. He says he’s spending money now that he’ll have in a few years, when all his debts will be paid off quickly. He says I should be thrilled that he’s coming to see me. And of course, I know I should feel thrilled, but i don’t.

Why don’t I feel thrilled? I don’t even feel a little bit thrilled when he mentions these trips! Why not? Is it all about the money? Does the cost really erase all of the joy i should feel about seeing my boyfriend again, even for a few days? Why, when i finally give in to his plans of coming to see me, do i not feel any happiness? In a way, i think i feel like he’s intruding. Intruding on my European adventure. How horrible. He’s my boyfriend. Does this mean I don’t love him anymore? Because it’s true, when I’m with him, i can curl up in his arms and feel safer than anywhere else, and go to sleep with him easily, and of course the sex can still be great, mostly. And we can laugh and joke around. But I honestly don’t want him to come see me. Why?? Maybe this is just a definite you need to break up with him sign. I can’t answer these questions. ..maybe it’s because of all the other stress he’s causing me, that occlude any of the potential joy.

So in addition to raising worrying doubts in my minds about how I really feel about him, these trips he plans make me doubt his ability to responsibly spend and manage his money. Not a good trait in a potential life partner.


Cyber sex. I can’t stand it, and he loves it. This makes him feel unattractive in my eyes, and makes me feel like I need to fake being turned on so that I can smooth over any awkwardness. But it’s hard to stay hard when you’re not turned on. I have to fantasize about other things and that’s not what i should be doing when my boyfriend’s stripping for the camera. The truth is i don’t find him that attractive on that little screen. I’d much rather look at any of the porn on my laptop. It’s something about his physical presence that turns me on, not him on the screen. After trying to cyber a lot, i had to eventually tell him that it was really awkward for me and that I didn’t like it. But I stressed the cyber sex thing, and not the i don’t find you attractive on the screen thing. He was hurt, but we moved on.

G is really sensitive. There were so many times during the London trip when things came up that stressed me to no end because he got so offended. For example, it was near the end of the trip, and he wanted to shower together like we did the other mornings. I knew that showering together slows us down, and I wanted to get on to whatever it was we were doing that day. So I got in first, finished, he got in, i spent about thirty seconds in there with him, and then got out. Very friendly, but just, we’re in a rush, let’s hurry. He got super offended and passive aggressive for the next few hours. So annoying. That night, our last night, we were going to have to be at the airport for 9am the next morning. So of course i wanted to pack the night before. After I apparently spent too much time packing, he got really mad/hurt that I wasn’t just spending time with him in bed rather than packing, seeing as this was our last night together for a month and a half or whatever. I was like, so you want us to miss our flights tomorrow? This led to the huge argument about M eventually, but it included a lot of other things. There was this other time, where we had sex, i came twice and he came once. Then we got in some little fight about something. Maybe about the shower thing, i don’t know. But it was one of those fights, which were worryingly frequent, where he would just suddenly stop talking to me, and roll away from me in bed facing the wall. And then he just wouldn’t talk. And I would wait. And wait. And eventually he would come out with some sarcastic remark about how he was so hurt by something i’d done, or not done, or whatever. Anyway, so this time i was like, whatever, and i just rolled over and tried to go to sleep. I was completely turned off. He eventually started talking, and we argued, and then made up, but i was super tired and had already almost gone to sleep, so then i proceeded to curl up and try to get to sleep. G, still horny, started jacking off and tried to get me to join in, but i was half asleep. He just continued to jack off for a while. And then he stopped. And then a bit later, i realized he was super mad, and he whispered something like, “I don’t know how you can just lie there and do nothing when your boyfriend is jacking off beside you.” Or it might have been “...when your boyfriend who you aren’t going to see again for months is jacking off beside you.” This made me feel at once furious, frustrated, and guilty. Should I have been turned on? More awake? But should he have realized that i was practically asleep? Should he have just gone to sleep himself? Whatever, i wasn’t in the mood for more sex, and he couldn’t understand how i wasn’t, seeing as he was jacking off beside me, and we only had 5 days together. It was basically just a big, frustrating few days.

The sex itself has issues on its own. If I could just fuck him, which he does love, then we’d be fine. But G can only get off in a very particular way. He has to be lying flat on his back and he has to jerk off with his right hand and he has to tense his legs and then eventually he can cum. This is the only way. Me, I can cum lying down, sitting, standing up, jerking with my left or right hand, in the shower, on the bed, i can cum from him giving me a blowjob, and i can cum when i’m fucking him, whatever. I’m just versatile. And he isn’t. Which, admittedly, gets annoying. Also, he loves it when i blow him, but i don’t like the taste of his cum. It’s gross. I’ve drank other guys’ come and it’s been much better. Much better. His is just gross, i can’t help it. So then i avoid giving him blowjobs. And then i feel guilty because it’s like i don’t reciprocate enough in bed. Which makes me try to get him off that way, but i don’t enjoy it. It’s gotten to the point where i just love kissing, groping, getting blown by him, and fucking him. That’s it. Not a healthy pattern for our sex life.

Greg also has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, for which he takes medication. The anxiety definitely contributes to a lot of the problems in our relationship, and it also, as a side effect, makes it harder for him to cum. The “contributes to a lot of the problems in our relationship” is much more important to me, and much more destructive. He told me about it to help me understand him, and why he is like he is, but i refuse to make allowances for delusional or irrational behaviour just because he’s been diagnosed with something. If someone’s being controlling, whether they have a disorder or not is irrelevant to me. The fact is, they’re being controlling and we have to deal with it, otherwise this can’t continue. So i feel like his anxiety is a problem, and what is caused by the anxiety is a problem, not the fact that he has a disorder.

These are most of the problems with this relationship, and why i’ve drafted this other message here for him. I think I’m going to tell him i’m breaking up with him on skype video, and then send him the message to read, and then talk with him more if he wants to. I feel like he’s going to completely break down. He’s already broken down at school at least twice that he’s told me about. Started crying in class because we were fighting or he was feeling depressed and I wasn’t communicating enough for him, or whatever. I don’t really know how it’ll go. I’m really stressed out about it. But this trip to the south with my sister and cousin have given me a chance, away from G, and Skype, to think about things. I hope I’m making the right decision.


A shot of Monaco to finish.