Someone Else Took My Road Not Taken...

March 1, 2009 9:56 AM

I think my head knows the answer to this already, my heart just needs to hear a couple other people saying the same thing... I just found out that an ex is not only with a new girlfriend, but that they're moving in together. And some of the time frame sounds really similar to what he and I went through, except I made a different choice -- and now I'm wondering if I actually made the wrong choice.

"Stan" and I started seeing each other in October of 2007, a month after his live-in girlfriend moved out. We were at first cautious about things being a "rebound" but soon fell for each other.

February and March of 2008 we were crazy for each other, to the point that we had a couple tenative conversations about "do you want kids someday" or "do you want to relocate to a different city someday". We were both on the same page on both counts -- in fact, he was the first time I could have ever seen myself having kids, and I told him that -- but we both were still being a little cautious -- on my part, it was because it was only five months we'd been together.

Then at the end of March my roommate announced she was engaged, and would move out in May. I thought a couple times about asking Stan whether he wanted to move in, but decided that it was too soon, and found another roommate in May, thinking Stan and I could revisit moving in together in another few months down the road.

Then Stan broke up with me in July 2008. He said the reason was that back in March and April, he had also asked himself whether maybe he could move in with me, and also felt it was too soon -- but then he'd figured that if he hadn't wanted to then, he probably never would. But he kept changing his mind back and forth about the breakup, thinking that maybe he didn't want to after all; after a couple weeks, though, he finally said yes, he did want to break up.

We had sporadic contact ever since, which I chalked up to him being busy. But then I saw Stan again for a little while yesterday, and found out that -- he started seeing someone long-distance in September of 2008, and just this month decided that he will move out of town to go live with her.

...The timing on this is all sounding very, very similar -- new girlfriend a month after breakup with the old one, talking about a future after five months -- and I can't help but wonder if, back in March of last year, whether I maybe shouldn't have gone ahead and asked him to move in, and that I made a mistake back then. He was the most affectionate, supportive, passionate, caring partner I've ever had, and it seems like the only reason he cut things off is that we both felt unsure about moving in with each other back in March.

And so now I can't shake the feeling that the only difference between me and Stan's new girlfriend is that she got to this point and said "yes, let's try" instead of saying "no let's wait." And so now I think I blew it.

Logically, I know that the real clincher is the fact that Stan was also hesitant in March, and if I had said something he may very well have been the one to say "not yet" and the same thing would have happened. But my heart needs to hear other opinions, so...what say you?

Thanks.

posted by anonymous to human relations (31 comments total)

He may be repeating the same pattern, but do you really think you made the wrong choice? From what you've said, it just seems like he wants to be with someone, and have relationship things, not that he wants to be with you, the previous, or the current person for yourselves.
posted by kellyblah at 10:00 AM on March 1 [5 favorites]

I'm wondering if I actually made the wrong choice

Who knows? You made the choice you made, and there's now little you can, and nothing you should, do about it.

With that said, it's common for people to feel regret or jealousy or uncertainty or any number of similar emotions when they hear that an ex has moved on, regardless of whether it was good that they got out of the relationship or not.

So I would suggest just stop worrying about it and move on with your life. I know that's easier said than done, but that's what you should do.
posted by Flunkie at 10:01 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

I can't help but wonder if, back in March of last year, whether I maybe shouldn't have gone ahead and asked him to move in, and that I made a mistake back then.

You may have, but you'll never know it. Even if it was, I am sorry to tell you that it will not be the last mistake you make. All we can do is hope that we do not make the same mistakes again and again.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:04 AM on March 1

Your choice was to continue things the way they were. His choice was to break up with you. If you were "the one" for him, he wouldn't have let you make your choice without giving you his thoughts on the matter, nor would he have made his choice.

It sounds like you're more regretful that Stan got away than you are that Stan got away. Not every guy you want is going to want you back.
posted by Etrigan at 10:10 AM on March 1 [8 favorites]

And so now I can't shake the feeling that the only difference between me and Stan's new girlfriend is that she got to this point and said "yes, let's try" instead of saying "no let's wait." And so now I think I blew it.

I've been here a dozen times thanks to my crippling fear of commitment coupled with my complete inability to resist hypothetical scenarios. But when I get to this moment, this awful point of "Oh my God, he's moving on and I am left ALONE, whyyyy do I dooo this to myselllllf," or when I see someone else in the heat of this terror, I remember why I'm freaking out. I'm such an expert at the terribly human moment of idiocy that I've written about it previously. You're freaked out he's moved on, which is fine, but did you make a bad decision by leaving him? Answers: no; it doesn't matter anyways; learn to accept his happiness while looking for new alternatives to your own.
posted by zoomorphic at 10:10 AM on March 1

I'm wondering if I actually made the wrong choice

What does that even mean? That you'll never find anyone you'd want to move in with and have kids with? That Stan was your one shot at love and it's gone and now you'll grow old alone with 17 cats?

That's silly. You both made a choice and frankly, Stan's reasons for breaking up with you sound immature. Both of you were being cautious, but he decided to bow that up into "OMG I DIDN'T ASK YOU THEN, NOW ALL HOPE IS GONE AND WE HAVE TO BREAK UP"

Mourn your loss and move forward with finding an adult and a flake, no matter what his other wonderful qualities may be.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:13 AM on March 1 [4 favorites]

It may not seem like it now, but it's a HUGE ocean and there are lots of other fish in the sea. Whether or not you think you made a mistake or not, you should move on and start casting your line again and you'll hook another one.

I'm not a believer in the "one and only soulmate" theory. I think we all have multiple "soul mates" and many, many "almost soul mates". Most of us are very lucky if we find just one of the latter and extremely lucky if we find one of the former.
posted by camworld at 10:13 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

No, I don't think you blew it. It was up to him, too, to say "let's try." It sounds like your hesitation was mutual and that it wasn't meant to be.
posted by zinfandel at 10:16 AM on March 1

If he wasn't sure (and didn't even bring it up) and you weren't sure, then sounds like neither of you were ready, or even communicating effectively about this. I won't play the game of "what ifs," but seems to me you made the right call.

And just guessing here, but bet he already planned to bail, and just glammed onto the "You didn't ask me to move in," thing as an excuse. I;d almost be willing he didn't even know about it until right before you were breaking up. Dumps the failure of the relationship back on you and gives him a clean break.

I don't think I'd be too unhappy to see him go. If you guys couldn't surmount this small conflict, I don't think it was going to happen.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:16 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Then Stan broke up with me in July 2008. He said the reason was that back in March and April, he had also asked himself whether maybe he could move in with me, and also felt it was too soon -- but then he'd figured that if he hadn't wanted to then, he probably never would.

In July it was way too early for either of you to move in with each other, and Stan saying that if he didn't want to do it then he never would is a really sissy answer. You did the right thing by getting another roommate. It just seems like he finally realized that the two of you wouldn't be moving in together because you had a new roommate and he had to live with someone so he moved on to find the next woman who wouldn't hesitate.

Your relationship with him should have been more than just about living with each other. Not saying you were wrong to talk about it, but it's not realistic after five months.
posted by snugglebunny at 10:21 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

My opinion is that you absolutely made the correct choice. It appears "Stan" was rather flippant and non commital - deciding in March or April to break-up, but only actually pulling the trigger in July.

Did he ever reveal his angst about not becoming your roomate? If not, I would say he only used that as an excuse to finally break up with you, and was too immature to deal with you like an adult.

I say be happy you didn't make the mistake of moving in together - you can do much better!
posted by walleeguy at 10:23 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

His excuse is completely bogus. If you want to move in with someone, there's really no need to completely rush in after only a few short months. It's not a "now or never" scenario for most mature people. He sounds impulsive and I'd say you made the right decision.
posted by cmgonzalez at 10:27 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

If your gonna jump, jump. Too late to look back now, life is full of yes or no, do or die choices.

They don't always have to be right, partners come and go largely based on these choices, as long as he is not a stalker, there is no harm in the decisions you made.
posted by Max Power at 10:28 AM on March 1

The only way for this question to really have an answer is if:

a) Stan's new girlfriend looks, acts, thinks, and responds to him exactly the way you do, and

b) He marries her and they stay together happily for the rest of their lives.

If both a) and b) turn out to be true, then yes, you made a huge mistake.
posted by bingo at 10:31 AM on March 1 [3 favorites]

If you weren't ready to move in together in March, then moving in together would have been a mistake. The fact that this one small event lead to him breaking up with you (in a way that is completely confusing because it seems like he didn't want to move in then either) suggests that it wasn't a strong relationship to begin with.

To put it a slightly stronger way:
a good relationship is not so easily ruined.

I have been in your shoes in that I felt like I messed up a relationship with someone I really wanted to be with, but looking back on it now I realize that as amazing as he was in certain ways, he would never have been able to give me what I needed in a relationship. And you deserve to be with someone who can.
posted by mai at 10:34 AM on March 1 [6 favorites]

The unfortunate thing about roads not taken is that you really can't see the other sets of choices/possibilities that would have followed. Stan might have decided to move in if you asked, you might still have broken up, and it could have been because he felt you'd done it too soon, which might leave you feeling like it was your fault for proposing the move.

Also, everyone who's pointed out that he could have initiated it too, they're dead right. If he's with the new girl because he likes her, it's not just a choose-your-own-adventure that deviated at page 28, and if he's with her because she chose right on p.28, that's a bit scary, and without the curse of mind-reading, nobody can know which is true. Neither is your fault though.

It sucks and I wish you the best in getting past it, but I wouldn't get too caught up in blaming yourself for what-ifs.
posted by carbide at 10:37 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

How long was he with live in g/f that he dated before you? Maybe with the new girl he's following the same pattern he had with the old girlfriend and it will end just like the first time. Sounds like he's got a pattern going. You don't always have to rush into moving in with your boyfriend/girlfriend. That can complicate things, not make them better.
I don't think you made a mistake.
posted by fructose at 10:42 AM on March 1

Human lives are filled with all kinds of separation. Friends, mates, and family members - the people in our lives are only lent to us. If they accompany us for some part of our journey, we're blessed. We don't get to control or keep them.

Sentences beginning "if only" can go nowhere but straight to regret. They support our false belief that we can control what happens in other people's lives. "I should have," "I could have," and "I would have" are all variations on the same theme. They postpone acceptance and necessary grieving.

At times it's we ourselves who do the leaving. We can count it a success, not a failure, when we've had the courage to acknowledge the truth of an ending. - from AA literature

Be willing to accept that you are courageous.
posted by netbros at 10:55 AM on March 1 [3 favorites]

Be happy with the time you spent together and then move on.

There's no use trying to figure out what alternative realities you're missing out on. You could have gone for a coffee and bagel yesterday morning at a coffee shop and met some perfect person with whom you'd spend the rest of your life, or you could have been hit by a bus. There's honestly no point in speculation. Just keep experiencing what life throws at you.

There are a lot of affectionate, supportive, passionate, and caring people out there, and now you know what characteristics you're looking for in a partner. You've gained from this.

People change. His experience with you might have opened his eyes to what he really wanted, so he may not even be the same cautious, indecisive guy you were dating. Maybe he took your experience together and learned from it, and maybe you should too.

There aren't really mistakes when it comes to this kind of thing. Life just keeps trudging along, and sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't.
posted by Relic at 10:55 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Oh, I've written previously about the path you're currently on. No one can say whether a mistake was made, your decision merely just...is. I think both you and I are looking at it as if we've passed up our soul mate and now that the potential soul mate is with someone else, we feel replaced and imagine all the perfection they're experiencing together. It should have been our perfection, but now someone else is reaping the bennies. It sucks.

But please don't do what I do/have done, which is to torture myself with outcomes that I imagine would have arisen if I'd've stayed. The bottom line is simply that no one knows what would have happened; even staying together could have resulted in a horrible crash and burn, perhaps worse than the one you're experiencing now. Pessimistic, yes. But imagining that all would have been right with your world had you stayed together is really its own version of torture. You simply don't know.

What you do know is that you are currently in this situation and you cannot rewind time. So grieve, but, as the poem Desiderata says, don't distress yourself with imaginings.
posted by December at 10:55 AM on March 1

The timing on this is all sounding very, very similar -- new girlfriend a month after breakup with the old one, talking about a future after five months -- and I can't help but wonder if, back in March of last year, whether I maybe shouldn't have gone ahead....

Nthing the above that you're looking at this backwards.

This has nothing to do with you or any choice you made. If anything, you're probably better off now, now that you see how fungible you were in the pattern of his own life's wheel.

He manages relationships badly, bouncing and moving too quickly, and he's doing it again.
posted by rokusan at 11:37 AM on March 1

The only way for this question to really have an answer is if:

a) Stan's new girlfriend looks, acts, thinks, and responds to him exactly the way you do, and

b) He marries her and they stay together happily for the rest of their lives.

If both a) and b) turn out to be true, then yes, you made a huge mistake.

Wait, what, bingo? Even if a and b are true, that doesn't mean, for example, that Stan would have been right for OP. And it also doesn't mean that she won't find happiness with someone else.

OP, you were with him for a very short period of time. I understand how it's easy to glorify your tenure with someone, especially when he cut it off while you were still feeling limerent. But know that, in the first year of a relationship, you don't really know if a person is right for you long-term. This can be due to a lot of things--happy brain chemicals, both partners putting their best face forward early on--but the truth is that your decision not to move in after five months of dating was a prudent and mature one. He sounds like an impulsive serial monogamist. I promise you--promise!--that you'll find other people who make you feel loved and supported. Just give it time--no reason to jump into things, as Stan did.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:54 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

The scenario where somebody breaks up with somebody else because they won't take the next step does not look like what happened with Stan. Imagine being completely in love with someone who wasn't ready to move in with you: what would you do? I bet there'd be a dozen conversations over a year or two, starting with how much you loved them and could see moving to the next level, and over time escalating to how you can't keep your life on hold waiting for them forever. This is not that scenario.

The closest I think your fear could come to the truth is that it's possible Stan wants someone who shows no hesitation about moving to the next level, someone who is willing to drive that process forward with their natural confidence and certainty, who is probably like that in the rest of her life too. If so, it's great for him that he found one of those rare people born without a doubt gene, if that's what happened. But if that's what he needs from a partner, it's not that you "made a mistake;" it's that the two of you were really just "not a good match," so it's good that you were true to who you are.

Another possibility is that he is acting out of an insecurity about his ability to commit to someone and trying to prove something to himself. Maybe he's even reacting to what happened with you and thinking "I just have to take the plunge this time while I still feel fully in love." If so, that might suck for this woman he's dating, since once the honeymoon is over, they'll be dealing with all his doubts while living together.

But both those scenarios assume a relationship between the move-in decision and the breakup. They might be totally unrelated. What he said makes it sound like he's just a person who "knows" early on in his gut whether something will work, and is decisive about that, which is a perfectly good way to make relationship decisions. If this is the case, you'll never know why he got that gut feeling that things wouldn't work out with you, (he might not be able to put it into words himself), but it's quite possible that it relates to something that you really like about yourself, and so it's all for the best that you've been freed up to move on. Good luck!
posted by salvia at 12:46 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

I think bingo was just pointing out that this question, as the asker knows, contains its own answer. The new situation with the new girl has no bearing on whether it was the right choice, since they're two different relationships.

There's good advice here, OP--try to relax and trust your own judgment, it sounds like you're doing fine.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:55 PM on March 1

I wouldn't worry about it too much. And the following phrase seemed relevant to me:

it seems like the only reason he cut things off is that we both felt unsure about moving in with each other back in March

You guys had been together just five months, which is pretty soon for moving in together, I think. And I feel that anytime you think something is the only reason for a relationship not working out, it's usually not true, there was something else going wrong as well.
posted by number9dream at 1:17 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

But my heart needs to hear other opinions, so...what say you?

I say, the price of freedom is regret. Getting over it involves thinking less about it, not inviting the internet to mull it over with you. What might of been isn't just the unknown, it's the unknowable. You have no future with hims so stop wasting the present trying to figure him out.
posted by nanojath at 2:03 PM on March 1

You probqably did make the wrong choice, but so what? We all make decisions that in hindsight are "wrong" Hindsight is 20/20. Big deal. Move on. You will find someone else.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:31 PM on March 1

Yeah, what carbide said.

And, your head does know the answer but your heart is still hurting and needs time to heal. In time, your heart will catch up to your head and realize that you didn't do anything wrong. Then you'll be ready to find someone new who will treat you even better than "Stan" did. Trust in yourself and a new and an even better path may well be ahead for you.
posted by ourroute at 4:12 PM on March 1

a good relationship is not so easily ruined.

This.

You didn't do the wrong thing. You did exactly what you needed to do: stated that you needed more time before moving in. That's what you required. It was fine to feel that way and made a lot of sense.

He didn't want to wait for your timetable to match his. And he didn't want to wait around hoping his feelings about you would change.

That's all it is. IT's the old "he's just not that into you" thing - if he really wanted to commit and make the relationship work, he'd have said "I really want to be with you and to work toward a life where we live together and move forward on all those goals/kids things. Let's negotiate about when and how that can happen and let's each be sure we're ready to go ahead."

But he didn't do that. He didn't feel strongly enough to do the work it took even THEN to be in the relationship with you - and it was a young relationship and an early decision point. There would have been many more subsequent opportunities for you to live together if you both felt you had a future together and were both willing to do the work to get there. If he didn't feel strongly enough about your relationship to do that, do you really think he'd have felt strongly enough to do the work of a long-term mutual relationship with you when you'd been together years, lived together, or were married?
posted by Miko at 6:10 PM on March 1 [2 favorites]

[This is a followup from the anonymous asker.]

OP here -- just wanted to clarify something.

It wasn't that Stan wanted to move in and told me, and that I didn't and told him that.

Instead, I privately thought, 'Should we move in together? No, it's too soon now, but we're doing well so maybe we'll get there in a few months.' But STAN'S private thought process was, 'Should we move in together? No, not now. ...But wait, shouldn't I want to by now? I guess if I don't want to now, I never will. I guess this is it, then.' He didn't even tell me he'd considered this until he was breaking up with me.

Thanks -- a lot of you have confirmed what I was thinking; that Stan was wonderful, but ultimately he rushes into things much too soon, and we'd both have been hurt in the process, and he'll just keep getting hurt until he figures that out.
posted by cortex at 6:50 PM on March 1

Yeah. And suppose he was thinking to himself 'Should we move in together? No, not now. ...But wait, shouldn't I want to by now?' And you interrupted that by saying "hey, let's move in together!" Is there any evidence this would have prevented the breakup? Best case he would have done something that he didn't really feel like doing, at your encouragement. Do you want that burden? What if he later wondered "should I move out? Yeah, maybe..."? Do you have to talk him out of it?
posted by salvia at 8:30 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]