I felt my eyebrows knit. I was thoroughly confused, couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.
I got up and put on my clothes, my overnight bag which had been transformed into my weekend tote since I’d been intending to stay with him from that Saturday up until Sunday. I’d imagined two days of being naked, having the place to ourselves, all that was on my mind was the many ways and places we could make love with the others out of the apartment. To say I was disappointed by his reaction would’ve been an understatement.
On my way out I found him in the kitchen, leaning against one of the countertops, his hands on the surface, his head down, face hung in a way where I couldn’t make out his expression in the dim light of the space he was in with the lights off. He hadn’t been saying a word, there was no drink in front of him, no food. He was simply waiting for my departure in a space where he didn’t have to look at me, where he could pretend I didn’t exist.
I stepped closer to him in an attempt to try and make some kind of amends before I walked out of the door.
“Just go, Lea.” He told me before I could make my way over to him.
I left that day and didn’t hear from him for a week. I’d called him over and over again. At one point it rang until it went to voicemail, but eventually his voicemail was all I got. I didn’t hear anything from him until the following Saturday morning when he asked me out to breakfast.
I’d been prepared to be in charge then, state my case and ask him what his issue was, but he blindsided me before the waitress came back with our coffees.
“I think we need to take a break,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What?” My mouth had instantly gone dry along with my throat, my heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“I don’t understand what it is that you’re into, but I won’t be in a relationship with someone who’s bisexual.”
“I’m not bisexual.”
“What do you call what I walked in on the other day?” He practically spat the words at me. “You weren’t watching women having sex? You weren’t turned on by seeing other women having sex with one another? Because that’s what it looked like to me. Then you offered to have sex with me right after. Those are bisexual tendencies.”
I wanted to ask him what he knew about bisexual tendencies at all, but I sucked in my breath, held my tongue. I was offended, hurt that he hadn’t let me explain myself days ago, hurt that he obviously didn’t care about me defending myself until he passed judgment and made decisions that I didn’t agree with.
“I don’t want,” I was frustrated and trying to choose my words carefully since he obviously had the wrong impression. “To be with a woman. Not like that. It’s just…a fantasy…like a game in my head.”
“People act on fantasies.”
“Not everybody. Not everyone wants to do everything they think about in their private thoughts in real life. What you walked in on was…sort of private. But it was the kind of private I didn’t think you’d mind. I thought you’d enjoy seeing me…like that. You know? Why wouldn’t you?”
I wasn’t entirely sure if anything I said had come out right, and he didn’t look satisfied.
“Those are the kinds of private thoughts you have? Sex fantasies with other women?” his expression was nearly unreadable, impassive, but it was also one that spoke of confusion. Maybe he wanted to understand and just didn’t know how.
I took that as an opening.
“Those aren’t the only fantasies I have, you know.” I let go of a sly smile, hoping that the air was clearing, that he was understanding me. My tone was bordering more on the teasing side of things. “How about this? You tell me your fantasies and I tell you more of mine. Deal?”
It was an intimate invitation that I was looking forward to, that I wanted to engage in. It was another side to us as a couple, as lovers, as adults in an adult relationship.
Ryan shook his head, dropped some money on the table, pushed his chair back and stood up.
“I can’t do this. I can’t be a part of something like this,” he looked at me, sorrow in his eyes as my mouth dropped open but no words came out. “It’s over. Don’t call me.”
He walked out and I called him immediately. I saw him look down at his phone and end my call without looking back at me as he walked away from the coffee shop.
That was our first breakup. The first of many; the first of seven. My first real taste of his flaws, his closed mindedness when it came to what I wanted in order to make me happy, his stubbornness. One of his housemates called me couple of days later and told me he’d come down with a bug, and broken up or not I ran over to take care of him. I loved him regardless of how he felt about me.
I wonder if we would’ve gotten back together that first time if he hadn’t gotten sick. I wondered that a lot over the years, if we would’ve ever gotten back together at all, especially after we fought.
Now we were at a crossroads where I could give in and put the ring back on, accept what we were going through as just another breakup, or I could follow through with what I’d started. We’d been together so long and had been through enough with one another that Ryan saw our fighting as one big mesh, just something that couples did from time to time. To him, we were no different from anyone else. We had our issues, we let them blow up in our faces, we yelled, we might take a break, but we weren’t really going to breakup, not in his eyes. Once flared tempers cleared, and things were back to normal, he forgot what we fought about at all until the next fight. Nothing got solved, nothing ever changed.
You couldn’t force someone to hear you; you couldn’t force someone to listen. I knew that now. I understood that.
And I didn’t expect him to change just for me. He didn’t have to. I didn’t want him to, not anymore.
Just because he couldn’t give me what I wanted didn’t make me think any less of him. For a lot of other girls he was still the perfect guy, he could be that person for them. He had wonderful qualities. He was genuinely a good man. But he was also human, and every single one of us have flaws. Not all of us were meant to be with one another.
The hotel room was beginning to feel stifling. I needed to get this over with. I needed to say what I had to say and walk away.
“Ryan, I am respecting your needs. Right now,” I said as I stood up. “You need someone who will accept you as you are, and so do I.”
“Don’t go.” He stepped in front of me, put his arms on my shoulders. He looked torn, like a man being ripped apart from the inside. “I’ll do it. Toys, watch…you know…whatever you want with you. Let’s just talk this out.”
“That would be almost like forcing you do it, and I don’t want to force you to have sex with me the way I want to have sex,” I told him gently, glad for the steadiness in my voice, the fact that the tears had stopped flowing, and I’d found my bearings somehow. “I want someone who will want to please me the way I want to be pleased. I think I deserve that. Don’t you?”
He shook his head, his jaws tight, strain written all over him. I felt bad, but not bad enough to give in and give him what he wanted.
“One of these days you’re going to have to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around your pussy. Fucking somebody isn’t going to make them fall in love with you, and I’m in love with you. I feel sorry for you because you can’t see that.”
I took in his words, took them for his truth, how he saw me and my situation and nodded my acknowledgment that he’d spoken and I’d heard, and he may or may not have been right. Whatever the case, I was done arguing. I was done feeling as if I’d done something wrong just because I told him how I felt. I was done being deprived as if it were an obligation of mine.
I sought freedom. I sought satisfaction. I sought experience. None of which I could gain by staying with Ryan. But I refused to be cruel and say those things that I felt. The weak were cruel, the strong had no need to be. And if there was one thing I knew, I wasn’t weak. Maybe I wasn’t as strong I
wanted to be, maybe I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was, but I knew I was strong enough to walk out of that hotel room door without Ryan’s ring on my finger. I knew what I had to tell him and there was no turning back.
“Goodbye, Ryan.” I said just before I walked out the door, letting it close behind me. I didn’t look back. The farther I walked away, the lighter I felt.
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