Jaimee Eat World

In your early 20’s you’ll meet someone who will want you to marry them. It’s important that you say no.

A Party Within A Dream

I don’t love to harp on about my previous relationship, but I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t drastically altered the way I view relationships now.

I met my ex-husband just a few months after I first moved out, so it hit at a critical point of my life that didn’t seem so critical at the time. At 23 I was newly independent, had just got my first proper full-time job, was living with a friend in the Junction area of Toronto which felt both new and familiar given my families ties to the area and I was starting to figure out who I was and what was really important to me.

After work I’d go running in High Park or to the nearby 24/hr gym depending on the time I finished. On nights my roommate and I both had off, we’d wander the Junction and go to different bars to try and find live music and meet interesting people. I was engineering records for friends in my off time and still avoiding but thinking about doing my own.

And then I met him and things changed.

I recognize now how easy it can get swept up in your first real relationships, but I felt like I’d always been pretty good about sorting out if I thought one I was starting was actually going to go anywhere or be sustainable long term. Since I was in a new and exciting point of my life, I think it was harder to see the signs that are so obvious to me now.

Before long my entire weekends were filled up by him, either him being at my place or me at his. Most of the time, honestly, I found it exhausting to see someone that regularly so quickly. I grew bored quickly with what became a bit of a standing routine; the same place for a quick bite for breakfast; the same place for a pitcher of beer; that usual place to meet up with friends for dinner when we didn’t go to that other usual place across the street.

And being new to paying so many bills, when his lease and ours was up around the same time the following year, we thought about it only in a practical sense. “Well, we can all save money if we get a 2 bedroom and split it 3 ways.” You know, like smart adults, or whatever.

I know now that during most of our relationship I didn’t really know how to say, “I don’t feel like doing that. Or doing anything. Or seeing you today. I need time to myself. I need space.”

It turns out the party I was living in my early 20’s was the one that wasn’t actually with him. The free-spirit I was able to embrace outside of my families home was quickly shuttered away once we decided to make that step to move in together because now it wasn’t just weekends, it was every day – and that shapes you.

Safety I Have Never Known

There is some safety to that, I thought. Knowing there’s an extra income helps. Having someone else theoretically able to jump out to the store to pick up whatever odds and ends helps. Having families to visit on holidays and other occasions is nice and something I’d always wanted more of in my life, and having someone to buffer your own family’s events isn’t nothing. I probably held on to that more than anything even when I knew I wasn’t enjoying it.

For every step I had taken forward when I first moved out, I took probably a dozen back once my ex and I were in the thick of it.

He wasn’t as interested in being active as I was, so I stopped being as active when we were together. I drank more with him and that coupled with his bad eating habits, which, don’t get me wrong, are all things I love but I just know I can’t consume every day – led to me putting on a bunch of weight. I lost so much confidence when I realized how bad it got. We’re not always ready to see what’s staring us back in the mirror.

I started to do a complete 180 on myself and that’s when I really started to notice how incompatible we were, but all those little red flags weren’t enough to make me consider breaking it off. It’d turn out they’d add up and eventually be impossible to ignore, but I think that because I was making so many strides myself at the time, I always kind of just figured the same thing would happen to him. One day he’d wake up and have this big momentum shift and we’d get on the same page with our future plans – that just happens, right?

Your 20’s are funny. You think you know a lot, but you know nothing. You get caught up trying to build a life and then before you know it you forget to pay attention to how you’re living it.

I did my share of dumb things in my 20’s, but the dumbest thing I did was move in with my boyfriend after less than a year of dating.

The second dumbest thing I did was marry him.

The Problem Was Us

I don’t harbour any ill will for my ex, despite everything. I have a tough time believing that any of the wrongdoing I faced from him was intentionally malicious. We were raised really differently and had our own ideas of how things should be. The one thing we were both great at was not communicating any of those things.

When it finally came time to part ways I didn’t really feel anything about it. I think I’d spent so many years trying to correct things or steer it in a better direction that by the time I found the courage to say I wanted out, my mind and body were already beyond it, exhausted from the journey that brought us there. Like an annoyed friend waiting longer for you than they knew they ought to, there was no exasperated sigh of empathy, no big grin of relief, and no tears of regret or sorrow, there was just this sort of numbness about it. Like, “Okay, great, finally, now let’s work on moving on, we have a long way to go.”

You can easily lose yourself in the pursuit of love but I’m not sure you can ever find yourself in it. To expect that of someone else is probably unfair and selfish. In deciding to end things, I think we gave ourselves permission to begin (or restart) our respective searches. Whatever we needed just wasn’t something we were ever going to be able to provide each other.

Divorce takes a little while, so it was well over a year before I felt like things had really ended. Getting that letter that confirmed all the correct t’s were crossed from the government was the first time I felt some relief about it.

But it was kind of like that kind of relief you feel when you set out to hike a mountain. You make it to the lookout point and say, “Ah, nice view, this was well worth the trouble,” and sit down on the empty bench to enjoy what your efforts have brought you.

Then you pull out the map and realize how far you still have to go to reach the top and you know you can’t sit there very long.

“But the view from that one?” your annoyed friend nudges you. “Way better than this one.”