I Only Knew How to be Her Best Friend.

I always dreamed about marrying my best friend.?All the good romantic comedies tell you to marry your best friend.?Passion supposedly dies out overtime, there won’t always be shared projects to get lost in, but you’d always be able to laugh, talk, and play with your best friend.?My ex was my best friend. ?We had a ton of chemistry and saw a lot about life and the world in the same way.?She more adventurous than I was. ?I preferred dinners over jazzy rap while she fancied the loudest dance floors, but we knew how to make each other laugh.?In the big ways that would result in tears, and in the subtle ways that would win each other’s cards in those provocative card games you play in groups.?Best of all, we could talk to each other for hours.?We spent seven hours on our first date just talking and didn’t stop until she left me.?

Shortly before then, when she told me how unhappy she had been, it was, in my mind, the first time our marriage hit real signs of adversity, and I expected our friendship to see us through it.?It always saw us through whatever because we understood how each other thought.?She was led by her heart, which caused her to be a bit extreme at times, but I could always reel her in and get her to see bigger pictures.?I’m led by my head, which causes me to be a bit too regimented.?She pushed my boundaries and got me to put more feeling into my thought process.?We could do those things for each other when no one else could, so getting through a little rough patch would be easy.?We’d find each other again by talking to each other, like always.?Then we’d find the humor in all of it and be able to laugh at each other in the end.?I was surprised when none of that turned out to be true.?

Maybe none of it turned out to be true because I ignored some of the other aspects of a relationship, relying too heavily on our friendship to sustain us.?Of course, marriage isn’t a solo project, but for my part I was never overly concerned about what I thought were minor issues in our relationship because, at the end of the day, we were best friends.?I figured we’d always be okay so long as that remained the case.?The truth is I only knew how to be her best friend.?Sure, I could make her laugh and give her good advice from time-to-time.?I could have smart conversations with her.?I might’ve even been a fun date.?But I didn’t know how to be her lover, and, thinking back on it, I’m not even sure if I could really consider myself a good partner to her.?

For my ex, the blind spots I carried with me as a lover and partner ultimately overshadowed the benefits that I offered her as her best friend.?It occurred to me in the countless hours I spent thinking about our marriage while my ex was in the process of leaving it, that a marriage consists of several buckets, and each of those buckets need to be adequately filled.?Friendship, intellectual and spiritual stimulation, inspiration, partnership, and passion were the ones that came to my mind.?There are likely others.?Whatever the amount, I wondered if they all needed to be filled to the brim for a marriage to be successful, but that seemed unrealistic and was demonstrably untrue looking at the marriages that surrounded me.?It seemed to me that some buckets would always be filled more than others.?In my marriage, the friendship bucket was overflowing.?The intellectual and spiritual stimulation buckets were sufficiently filled as well.?I think we inspired each other, at least for a while.?But the buckets that required the most attention were passion and partnership.?

Whatever block I had that made it difficult for me to express joy and sadness also made it difficult for me to express love, or at least the sappy, lovey-dovey versions of it that my ex wanted from me.?She required affection and compliments all the time, by her own admission.?Complimenting her was easy.?She was the prettiest, smartest, and funniest person I knew during our time together, and I wasn’t shy about telling her that.?I told everyone that.?But I don’t think she heard it over my nitpicking.?I heard once that every criticism needs to be offset by seven compliments for the compliments to take hold.?Anything less than a seven to one exchange and the criticism would be remembered more than the compliment.?I missed that mark, so my ex paid a lot more attention to what I didn’t think about her than what I did.?

As for affection, add my name to the list of guys who struggle with showing it because of whatever reasons many of us do.?I’m not against it.?The lovey-dovey stuff has its place, but I’ll admit that for me it isn’t all the time.?I also don’t think about all that when I think about love, personally.?To me, love is more about loyalty, compromise, sacrifice, and commitment than it is about hugs and kisses.?That’s what my parents taught me.?In the darkest moments during my divorce, when I started to believe that everything was my fault, I convinced myself that maybe, subconsciously, I had always wanted to marry my best friend so that I didn’t have to tap in too much with that other side of love.?Maybe I wanted smart conversations and jokes to compensate for what I knew was my weakness with that side of it.?But, even with my best friend, it didn’t.?

My ex didn’t tell me much of what she felt about our marriage before she left it, but she’d always tell me that she wanted more intimacy.?I just never knew how to give that to her.?I’d eventually find out that intimacy is a learned skill, but it’s not one that I had while I was married.?The only way I knew how to answer her demands for more intimacy was to try different things during sex.?I couldn’t disentangle the concept of intimacy from sex.?And to be honest, I didn’t know much about that either.?Not really.?Because I didn’t know how to talk to her about sex.?For all that talk about us being able to talk to each other for hours, we barely talked about sex. ?I didn’t appreciate at the time how important it is to talk about sex with your partner.?In fact, I think I avoided those conversations because I knew that it meant also talking to her about my insecurities around sex.?I wasn’t comfortable being vulnerable with her in that way.?I wasn’t comfortable being vulnerable at all.?I thought vulnerability would make me look weak, and I didn’t want to look weak in front of the person I loved most.?

My ex, on the other hand, could talk about her feelings and insecurities for days, but she’d probably say that I didn’t create an environment where she’d feel like she can have those sensitive conversations with me.?She wouldn’t be wrong.?Whenever she tried, I’d quickly change the subject or brush her off.?That contributed to us not being as open with each other as we should’ve been.?About a bunch of things, really, but definitely about sex. ?The truth is I went through our entire relationship without really knowing her sexual desires and limitations.?We had sex, and it was good at times, but it would’ve been better if we had communicated more about it.?That would’ve fostered more of the intimacy she wanted, which would’ve led to more passion in our marriage.?

Vulnerability with my ex outside of the bedroom would’ve also fostered more intimacy.?I should’ve told her that I was so hung-up on professional achievement because it was the only way I knew how to make my parents’ sacrifices worth it.?Or that I rejected the concept of family because growing up mine lacked so much of what I thought a proper family was supposed to look like.?I’m not even sure that I knew those things while I was married to her, but I should’ve tried to tell her anyway.?Most of all, I should’ve talked to her about my father. ?If I was going to talk to anyone about it, it should’ve been her.?She’d push me on that subject too, and I’d change the subject or brush her off.?I just didn’t know how to open up to her in that way.?Or maybe I still scared of looking weak, but my inability to reach into the corners of my heart and communicate what caused me pain is probably what made me look the weakest in her eyes.?

Partnership should’ve been easier.?I thought I was a good partner to my ex because I viewed us as a unit.?In my mind, we were supposed to attack every part of life as a unit.?Whatever we did, we did as a team.?That didn’t mean we didn’t have our own lives.?She had her own friends and interests outside of our marriage.?I did too, but I never thought too much about either of our individual needs because the only thing that mattered to me was the unit.?She needed adventure and independence. ?To do and go wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted.?And she had no interest in waiting.?Even if I couldn’t or wouldn’t join her in the moment.?Waiting killed her.?During one of the more ridiculous fights that we had towards the end, she recalled how much fun she had traveling alone before we had met.?It empowered her in a way that she missed, and she wanted to get back into the practice.?I wanted to support her, but I also didn’t want her to go anywhere that I thought we should experience together, so I asked that she leave the more couple-y destinations for us.?Solo trips, in my view, are small getaways.?Go somewhere domestic by yourself but not France.?That attempt at compromise was just more rules to her.?In the end, though, I don’t think she really cared about that.?She was fighting for what she felt was her freedom, and in her mind, I was still getting in the way of it.?

We didn’t really have any shared goals either.?I was chasing the image of life I wanted for us, and I’m not quite sure what she was chasing.?Maybe a life that wasn’t limited by images. ???In my brief review of those marriages that surrounded me, it didn’t seem like a few of the participants even liked each other, but they were seemingly still going strong while my ex and I faltered.?It appeared to be because they had a commonality of purpose.?My ex and I didn’t have that.?We didn’t want children and, at least at the time, decided to forego home ownership.?Our relationship wasn’t guided by some higher purpose or mission.?We didn’t have a plan for our marriage beyond trips and laughs.?I haven’t landed on how much of a big deal I think that is.?As I write this, I’m still trying to release myself from the burden of always needing a plan, but I’ll admit that I did lose my direction for a while.?I spent so much time trying to get the girl and the job but didn’t know what to do with myself once I finally did.?I needed a new plan.?Maybe the plan should’ve just been keeping the girl happy.?I could’ve done that just by committing to having as much fun with her as possible.?But I didn’t get there quickly enough, and I think I lost her while I was trapped in the rut of trying to figure out what was next.?

When my ex told me that she had lost herself in our marriage, I didn’t think it was that much of a big deal.?I thought that we were supposed to lose ourselves in the marriage.?Not entirely, of course, but somewhat.?When you marry someone, I thought you were actively choosing to sacrifice a portion of yourself and replace it with whatever you and your partner build together.?How much sacrificing I did during our marriage is something my ex would probably have specific feelings about, but I was willing to meet her where she needed me to. ?She felt that in a good marriage, however, or at least in the marriage that she wanted, neither individual would have to sacrifice themselves at all.?Life was too short for sacrifices.?She deserved everything she wanted right when she wanted it, and she could find the person that would give it to her, and he’d still be able to give her great advice and make her laugh.?That person would push her boundaries in the ways she wanted them to be pushed and celebrate all her more impulsive decisions and eccentric outfit choices. ?And that person wouldn’t care if she gained a little weight.

?I agreed with her.?She could find someone who neatly checked every single one of her boxes, and I could do the same, but we’d both still be sacrificing something.?In the immediate moment, each other.?We committed to each other.?Maybe we didn’t check every one of our boxes, but we chose each other for a reason, and neither of us came to the decision lightly.?Whatever it was between us that was right kept us going fairly uninterrupted for a long time.?Because the good outweighed the bad.?My ex wouldn’t allow herself to remember it then, but she’d remember it eventually.?We were building something special.?Indeed, we were still very much building.?We were babies at marriage.?There was time for us to grow with and learn from each other, but that would’ve required my ex to wait.?She wouldn’t do that.?Instead, she chose to try and find someone that she would be in complete lockstep with.?And ultimately decided that the sacrifices she couldn’t see with someone else were easier to stomach than the sacrifices she had been making with me.?

I’m not sure how much a person should reasonably be expected to sacrifice in a marriage, but I know that I can’t lose sight of the individual moving forward.?People don’t lose who they are as individuals just because they join a team.?The parts of the individual that need to bloom deserve water.?The individual needs to shine and be seen separate from the unit.?My ex didn’t think I saw her because all I saw was our unit.?I didn’t pay enough attention to the parts of her individuality that needed to shine, so what I thought we were building together she began to believe I was building by myself.?

I mentioned my marriage buckets to a few friends after my divorce.?Some of them told me that commitment, honesty, and mutual respect were more important than any buckets.?That’s undoubtedly true, but I’m not ready to abandon my buckets just yet.?However, I do think the levels at which they are filled will inevitably fluctuate during a marriage, and that’s okay.?There may be periods where the friendship is at the center of a relationship and others where it’s not.?Periods where two people in a relationship barely want to touch each other and others where they can’t keep their hands off each other.?And some periods where the couple is in total lockstep with one another on goals and dreams, and others where they can’t seem to get on the same page.?None of it means that there’s something inherently wrong with the relationship.?One or more buckets appearing empty from time-to-time isn’t reason to lose hope.?Just tend to your buckets, together with your partner, with honesty, mutual respect, and commitment.???

Part 3 Teaser: How Do You Check Out?