How do you get over someone you don’t want to get over?
DEAR CAROLYN: I broke up with my girlfriend of three years last year to move across the country for a job opportunity. We had a fantastic, mutually satisfying relationship and had so much fun together. Even now, if I needed help of any kind, she’s the first person I’d want to call.
I knew from the beginning that she wouldn’t do a long-distance relationship; she’d tried it before with another guy and hated it. I never thought I’d move away, but I applied for a really long-shot job at my current company, and, surprise, surprise, I got it. I could not pass this opportunity up; it would have killed my career and, in a way, me.
She took it really well when I told her in August. We agreed to stay together until the end, but I sort of closed off because our relationship had an expiration date, and we split in October. But we still kept in touch, and I even spent Christmas with her and her family.
Now here I am in my shiny new job and apartment, and she’s all I think about. How do you get over someone you kind of don’t want to get over? I feel like we could be separated for a decade and I’d still run back to her if I had the chance. Is it fair to myself to keep hoping that maybe somehow, she’ll decide to move here, too, and we could be together again? Should I stop talking to her completely and try to forget her?
When I first moved, things were so exciting and I thought I was over her, but clearly I’m not. She was the one, but not in the right place or at the right time.
— Long-Shot DEAR READER: Why would she do for you what you weren’t willing to do for her?
This may sound judgy, but it’s not — neither overtly nor by implication. It’s just the question you need to ask. You were absolutely entitled to make the choice you made.
And sometimes leaving someone behind for a life-changing opportunity is the right thing to do. So many romances are meant to end, especially the ones we start before we understand who we are and what we want from life.
But when a connection is good enough to keep forever — when you realize gaining the job wasn’t worth losing the person, and when it’s not just the homesickness talking (ahem) — then you need a better answer than, “Gosh, I hope she moves here, too.” The way you treat her has to reflect her value to you, or else those “she was the one” pronouncements are self-serving fluff.
She wasn’t in the wrong place or time; you put her there when you decided the long-shot job was more important to you than she was.
So that’s where my advice starts: Listen carefully to your feelings. Listen to what they told you to do before you moved, what they’re telling you now, and what changed in between. Then let these ideas settle in. Then ask yourself what you’re willing to do about it. Think of it as a sweet get-to-know-you phase with yourself and your priorities.
If it turns out you chose the right priority as your life’s foundation, then please leave her be. Stop with “the one” narrative, even just in your head.
And if the Aha Fairy says you set the wrong priority when you dropped love for career, then own your mistake — meaning, don’t wait for her to fix it for you by moving. Do the hard work yourself.