I had an insight yesterday that makes me feel much better.
I had a big breakup early this summer from a long distance partner who was very important in my life. We saw each other every 4-6 weeks, we had plans for the future, we were working partners spiritually, we were solid.
Many factors seemed to contribute to the breakup, mostly involving a completely lack of time for me on her part, due to expanding her business, spending more time with her child and parents, and a new local relationship in her life. I just couldn't get enough talking time with her between visits to maintain a strong heart connection. Then I traveled 1000 miles to spend a Beltane festival with her. She told me when I got there that she wanted to spend the time with her new partner instead. I'm flexible and I dealt with it, though it hurt like a mo-fo. I asked a friend if she wanted to spend the festival with me. But after the weekend was over, I broke up with my partner, much to her surprise.
I have said from the beginning that the reason I broke up with her is that she just couldn't find an extra 20 minutes a day to talk to me. I've also said that it isn't just having a new partner that caused all the problems, but that the whole cluster of time sucks did it.
Her friends have complained that she has no time for them either. That she has broken plans that had been made a year ahead of time. And most of them have said that the new partner was the cause. I have told them that he was not the only factor.
She has said that any friend that would abandon her because of a lack of time must not be a very good friend to begin with. This has made me think about how bad a partner have I been to break up with her, just because she has no time to talk on the phone with me. I beat myself up for being shallow and selfish.
My revelation is that for her friends, the lack of time is from a variety of choices in her life that have sucked away all her time -- work, child, parents, and new partner. But for me, our relationship could have weathered the lack of time. What our relationship couldn't survive is how being with her new partner changed her and therefore changed our relationship.
When we were together, she was a strong, independent, open-hearted woman who lived in the present and was engaged with the world. When we were together, we were totally with each other. After four months with her new partner, she became a withdrawn, co-dependent, closed off woman who lived in the fear of her past. When we were together, she was no longer Here and Now, but somewhere else. She changed. Our relationship changed. It became something I no longer wanted to participate in. For my own happiness, I broke it off.
Without the changes in behavior, we would still be together now.
What this tells me is that I made a good decision to break up, and that it wasn't because of the selfish reason of not getting enough attention. I can stop blaming myself.
This doesn't mean I blame her either, or him. It's just something that happened. People change when they have new relationships. It's no one's fault.
It's similar to the dissolution of my first marriage. My first wife and I went through five years of Hell of an extremely difficult pregnancy, a medically complicated baby with handicaps and many surgeries, and my wife's cancer. When we came out the other end, we both were different people and our relationship had fundamentally changed, and not in a good way. We divorced.
I don't blame her or myself for that. I certainly don't blame my son. It just happened and it's no one's fault.
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