By Mike Hunt

It’s Over When It’s Over

A friend will not stop talking about an ex she broke up with more than ten years ago. She still compares anyone she is dating to this person. The ex came to town recently and they hooked up. She commented about how she didn’t know what she saw in them and how it wasn’t that great, but then she started obsessing again after they left. She seems otherwise sane, but she’s starting to drive me crazy. I am out of patience.

Your friend is dating other people, which in my opinion, is a sign that she is attempting to move on. I give you credit for having been patient. I’m sure you were more understanding at some point, but I can see how a situation like this could suck for you. We can’t help but compare our choices to the ideal images that we’ve created in our minds and hearts, whether or not they’re realistic or we verbalize them. I think that it may not have been wise for her to hook up with this person, but maybe the experience will help her down the road? Bottom line is, she is not required to get over it for the sake of you, or anyone else.
The concept of “getting over” a relationship, death, job loss, disability and moving on isn’t always realistic.We will have emotions, some will be ugly, and those processes may be fully public and highly annoying.They may or may not cause us embarrassment later, but the truth is that they are over when they are over.

Humans can dance around or compartmentalize undesirable emotions for many years, but eventually we gain some level of acceptance. I suspect that she will. A bigger problem, is your having lost faith in your friend’s ability to move through this (I might apologize to her for that). Her extended process around this break up has no doubt changed in ten years time, and you have lost the ability to see those changes objectively.

Stop tuning her out if you can, or at least let her know that you feel like you might be doing it.Think about the times in your life when you felt pressured to get over it, or you were told to do so and you were unable. I’m sure that there are/were many.

I ask you to be patient for another three long years.

I am a gay man my mid-forties. I have been single for about five years, but most of my friends are partnered. I am very comfortable with my life. I am not against dating and casual sex so much as I am against being partnered with someone who I am not compatible with. I know in my heart that I will find a partner someday, and I am not stressed about it. My partnered friends, on the other hand, continually try to set me up with men, and thus far, they have been way off the mark in their choices. I can admit that I am searching for a needle in a haystack, but in this world of relationship horror stories and bad break ups, I feel good about my discretion. I have started declining invitations to gatherings where I know that a “set up” will occur, but I’m getting a little lonely.

If you’re as secure and unhurried about finding a partner as you claim to be, go anyway.You never know who you will meet when you step outside of your door.