Breaking Up While Long-Distance
It’s still tough, but I wouldn’t want anyone else as an ex
“Maybe we should just call it now,” Jonah had told me as we sat together in the late summer night, soon after I found out he had been lying about wanting to move to Portland with me. (I had never asked him to; he had offered, to my delighted surprise, two months into dating, and kept up the pretense). “I don’t want to keep hurting you, and I don’t know what would be the kindest way to end things if we’re apart.”
There is never a “great” time to break up with somebody, but ending things over FaceTime, or delaying the decision until actually seeing the unsuspecting other, seemed like particularly unpleasant options. And yet, still more preferable than an immediate breakup sounded.
“Well, losing you two weeks before I’m supposed to move a thousand miles and start everything anew would be much more painful.” If he wanted out, fine, but it couldn’t be credited as a benefit to me at this particular point in my life — as much as I was hurting from the manipulation.
Clearly, we were both worried about the longevity of the relationship, long-distance or not. But we also found the other too important in our lives to give up now. Long-distance felt like a litmus test; if we could make this work, we could make anything work. And…
