Unspoken but very clear break up
I'd love to have some insight navigating this unspoken but very clear break up I just had.
As context, i'm a 28 year old woman, he's a 47 year old man. Our relationship was heavily tinted by me formerly being his student in college, and also me being the same age as the daughter he wasn't allowed to raise. On my side, I of course have my dad's abandonment to blame for part of the attachment.
We started a casual thing three years ago, and despite us having monogamous relationships in the middle, we restarted things recently once we both started exploring ethical non-monogamy. We saw each other quite sporadically, but eventually we both started seeking each other more often and started trying to come up with a "connection" that worked, in terms, for both of us. We spoke about not having a relationship but definitely having "a thing" that more clearly defined what we wanted, as none of us are into the usual relationship things (none of us want children, or marriage, or living together, none of use cares about labels, etc.). However there were some things I did care about, mainly, being able to be free with him in any environment, going out, having dates, all that jazz which we had when we first started but had slowly faded as routine took over.
He had an illness and asked me to accompany him to a colonoscopy, and that was really the thing that kind of set off this break up. I felt more important, he felt safe to be dependent on me. A few days later he fell ill again, I cared for him, he cried about his cat passing away a year ago, he complained about not being able to form connections because he was weak when emotions got the best of him, i just listened and tried to comfort him.
A few days later we had a hang out, he backed off it and it upset me, because it felt disrespectful with my time. He interpreted this as me becoming "a witch" and immediately asked for time apart. I gave it to him and we didnt speak for over a month afterwards.
When we spoke again, I said i didn't feel like breaching the subject, that i wanted to reconnect first. We hung out and he told me all about how he had been reading more into ethical non monogamy and how he wanted to explore that, I, stupidly, took that as him wanting to explore it with me, so the next time we spoke (like two weeks after that because i'd been travelling), I broached the idea of having each other as primary partners and how I needed to feel more free in living the love I felt for him. I dared to say that word because I felt safe in needing to express myself, in searching to have my needs met. He, however, said he couldn't have a relationship with me because I hadn't lived enough, that I didn't know what I wanted, and that I had to live more before he considered it. That maybe someday we'd have a thing, but that "we'll see" and "maybe then I wont anything with him instead".
That was the end of it
We havent spoken in a month again, and I texted him yesterday. Just something easy, "do you wanna grab a coffee today?". I miss him as a friend, my sister recently got diagnosed with cancer, I am struggling with my PhD, my mom is having some wild economic issues that affect me, i'm overwhelmed and just wanted to confide in him. He didn't reply at all, not even to say "no", this is something he had never done, in these three years.
For a second I questioned if he even had his phone? maybe something was wrong with it? but yesterday he uploaded a text to his blog about being with someone, someone who sang, who he wanted to make feel good, who made him feel good. I felt a little jealous, not because he was able to be so openly sweet with someone but because he has never written that way about me... but today, today he wrote about me:
"Cautious Flame
It was always that low light. faint shine, slowly filling the place. A kind of violet, something between red and blue, in a dark environment. Like rays that reveal stars. Maybe trash in space. Moving like timid waves. Slow, yet absolute.
The elegant rise of the smoke through the rays. A sensation of anonimity. Of being inside a bubble, a black hole. Magnetic and sinister. That swallows, and thus, stretches. Makes the trail move and, with it, even the breaths
That color didn't light up: it rather covered the night. Enclosed at the same time it protected. Kept inside diamonds from the sky, along with dying stars. It could be unchaste, passional, ilicit. And even then desire flowed.
Love was uncertain. It roamed, but dressed in lies. Presented itself as aprehension or freedom. A seductive courtesy that danced, observed, possessed. A smile, a hand, a kiss. Ready pleasure, useful, functional. Comfortable, cozy, incomplete.
In that somber environment, caloric and encompassing, a certain connection emerged. Small lights built a bridge. They gave way to a bond, a relationship. Nothing exact, but articulated. Like an agreement o a deal that became a dangerous friendship. A sort of fable between a brain and the sunset
A beautiful portrait of flaws and sins. Small thunders that won't leave the room"
I dont know what disheartens me the most, that I feel like not getting a reply and then reading this text is definitely an end to something. Or that he writes about me in somber terms, his text to this other person evoked warmth, his text about me evokes... just sadness, I think. Maybe what hurts the most is him describing our pleasure as useful and functional, as incomplete.
Is this really it? Is this really the end? For a moment I thought he loved me, for a moment I thought he was considering it... but now I don't know how to take this. I dont know if I should mourn the bond we lost, or if I should mourn that I was so wrong in reading him, in thinking he did love me.