When You Can’t Be With The One You Love

Yes, this is about pain. But with a twist.

Long distance relationships, I can tell you from experience, are a very special brand of sweet torture. Anyone who’s ever been in one can tell you, it hurts. Is my pain worth it? Oh hell yes. Not even an issue. Of course, I do have a masochistic streak so that probably helps.

I could make a list of things that are not issues, but that would make for a long, pointless blog. Let me instead say I had considered all the things that could potentially become issues before I officially got into a long distance relationship. I assessed my ability to deal with them and decided beforehand (pretty accurately I should add) they wouldn’t be issues for me. So if all the objections to long distance relationships you hear about, are not issues, you’d think I was in an issueless relationship. Yeah, no. That would be too simple. Since when have romantic relationships ever been simple? That’s just not happening.

What’s the issue that blindsided me? Guilt. I feel guilty putting him through the same things I had already decided are not an issue for me. Dealing with my pain, pfft I can do this easy. Dealing with the knowledge he is probably going through the same pain, ouch, no, that’s tough. That will keep me up some nights.

This is me being a complete hypocrite, I know it. If I reverse the situation, I’d be offended. Excuse me, who the hell are you to decide for me what I can or can’t deal with? Last I checked that is my decision to make, thank you very much. I’m a grown-ass woman and I will decide for myself what situations I will or won’t put up with. So don’t give me any of that “for my own good” crap. I’ve made up my mind. If I ever change it, you’ll be the first to know. ← all of that. He’s a grown-ass man. He can make his own choices. I completely believe that. And it makes not one bit of difference.

Being the cause of pain of someone you love is worse than being in pain. It requires a sadistic streak, which I discovered I do have, but on some days it seems not quite broad enough to make this a non-issue. Luckily on those days I have a natural arrogance to fall back on. I know I’m worth it.

In the name of full disclosure, the other thing I can fall back on are thoughts of him taking all that pain and frustration out on me first chance he gets. *cough* I’m getting off track here….

Right, being the source of the other’s pain. One of the results of that mind-fuck, is me holding back. There are things I feel, that I don’t express. Not because I am ashamed, or because I don’t want him to know (I’m willing to bet he knows), but because I don’t want to make things harder on either of us than they already are. And I have this distinct feeling he does the same. I’m thankful for that. My imagination does a pretty good job of guilt tripping me, but I can still write it off as me being too imaginative. I don’t need to know just how badly he is hurting. I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to deal with that.

Versions of a story making the point I’ve made here have been living in my Medium drafts for a year — as long as I’ve been on Medium. Before that, as word documents on my computer. Written, deleted, written again, but never published. I never published because, as I said in the previous paragraph, an admission of hurt can increase guilt about causing hurt.

I’m writing this out, once again, because someone asked some questions, and one of those questions got my mind back on this strange trick of love. I don’t want to suggest this is the answer to his question, because that was about a situation I have no knowledge of. Probably the real answer is something completely different. This is about a personal experience. It’s an issue I am dealing with. I don’t know if I’m dealing with it well, or badly, or if there’s some trick to dealing with it. Because I have not seen anyone admitting to dealing with this issue. But I can’t imagine I’m the only one.

This time I’m hitting publish. For anyone else who is dealing with the same issue. Not being alone makes things easier.