It’s quite rare that you find yourself in my current situation- recently broken up with your best friend, and both of you still wholly and completely remaining in love with one another. Since breaking up, we go on more dates, we kiss longer, we love harder. Weird, right? Not so much.
Deciding to live together and label ourselves as in a relationship, in our early 20s, along with both attending college, working full-time jobs, and squeezing in all of our extra time to spend with one another, all combined and exploded right before our eyes. Cohabitating, especially in a stressful time of our lives like our college years, can bring strain on a relationship that otherwise may have prevailed. Instead of coming home and greeting each other with kisses and questions about each other’s days, we would be asking why the garbage wasn’t taken out, why the dishes weren’t cleaned, or just why the laundry wasn’t folded in the particular manner that we liked. Sounds more like a marriage on the way to divorce rather than a relationship with a future. The dates ended. The respect dissolved. The love was dying.
We woke up one morning and realized just how unhappy we truly were. And how stupid that was, with all of the love that we still had in our hearts for one another. We were best friends, after all. Why were we wasting time arguing when we could be spending time laughing?
Soon after, I moved out into a place of my own. We had ended our long-term, Facebook official relationship. No more labels. No more expectations.
Since then, we make time to see each other once a week, planning special dates and trips, longing for the next minute that we will be in each other’s arms. We say, “thank you,” and “I love you,” and take extra little moments to express how we feel or to communicate ideas. We enjoy going to get a simple cup of coffee, deciding which movie we want to see, which restaurant seems the best for dinner.
I look at him and smile, respecting his own thoughts, opinions, goals. He is not mine to restrain or take advantage of. He is a person, just like me, trying to find his place in this crazy world and is scared to death. He is my soulmate, my best friend, and the minute I forgot how important and special that is, I deserved to “lose” him.
By distancing yourselves and realizing that not all 20-something-year-old couples have to get married or live together in order to be complete alongside our careers, can open up new doors for you and the person that you freely call your “soulmate.” Take away the labels and laugh, enjoy one another, and love harder. Sometimes, we all need to take a step back in order to see what we really have. And maybe, you’ll end up together in your own weird way.
(All Photos in this Article Courtesy of Unsplash)