Breaking up is not easy. I think we all know that. It's even harder when you realize that the reasons you broke up are not the real reasons, or even the ones you expected. Then you get to spend hours agonizing over what you could have done differently, and what you should have done that you didn't, and what you did that you shouldn't have done.

Close to a year ago, I realized that I no longer worried about losing my long-time SO due to non-monogamy anymore. For the first time in my life I began to believe that I'd found someone that would accept me for everything I am, and love me. I began to believe that relationships could last forever.

So I began to think about marriage. I've never been married, because I didn't want to get married if I didn't believe it was forever. Call me old-fashioned, but that's the way I felt. That little piece of paper doesn't mean a great deal to me. If the love isn't there, the legal sanction doesn't matter. A little before the end of 1998, in a fit of romaticism (which I am not good at) I decided to ask my SO to marry me on Valentine's Day. I thought it would be a nice romantic gesture.

On February 13th, my SO was obviously unhappy about something. I asked him about it, expecting the usual problems at work. I knew he hadn't been happy with his job for some time, and expected to hear that things were still going badly there. I was very surprised when he replied that he thought we were coming to the end of the road. He said he wasn't happy, that he still loved me, but he wasn't in love with me anymore. He wanted to leave before things got worse and we started hating each other.

Surprised is not the word for the way I felt. Flabbergasted comes much closer to describing it. I hadn't realized that we had any problems. I'm usually pretty perceptive, and I never even saw it coming. I knew he'd been spending a lot of time running around with some friends from work, but I'd been working six days a week, and I thought it was great that he had people to do things with when I wasn't around. I didn't realize that over the past six months or so he had been distancing himself from me emotionally. When we were together, everything was fine. I thought he was as happy as I was.

Over the next few weeks, while he tried to find someplace to move to, more details came out. Apparently the open relationship had been a major problem for him. And everytime I'd asked him if he was okay with it, and told him I wanted to know if he had any problems with it, he always said he was fine with things. He wasn't. My wanting other people in my life made him feel inadequate. It made him feel that I was indifferent to our relationship. It made him feel that I didn't love him enough.

And while all this was going on, he never said a word to me. He never told me he wasn't happy. We used to argue about who loved who the most. Even the week before he told me he wanted to leave, he argued that he loved me more than I loved him. He was wrong.

Then he expected that we'd still be good friends afterwards. He kept telling me I was his best friend, like nothing had changed. Everything has changed, and things will never be the same.

I'm having a lot of trouble getting past the anger and resentment I feel. Relationships are supposed to be partnerships. If there are problems, you at least try to work them out. Instead, he just decided that things couldn't be fixed, that I wouldn't make compromises, that I couldn't be monogamous if I wanted to, that I didn't love him enough, and he gave up on whatever we had. And I didn't have any choice in the matter. I wasn't treated like a partner, I was treated like something that was disposable.

I had no delusions that we would live happily ever after with no more problems, but I did think that we'd try to work on whatever came up before we gave up. And finding out that he didn't want to make any effort to work things out has hurt me very badly. It has made me feel that I wasn't very important to him. That he only loved me as long as it was convenient for him, and when he had to put a little effort into maintaining our relationship, he decided I wasn't worth it.

This is a very one-sided account of what happened, but I don't understand his side of it. I haven't gotten any explanations of why he decided everything without talking it over with me. Someday he may answer all the questions I have, and maybe then I can understand where he was, but until then, I've only got my side to look at. And I need to figure out where things went wrong to get past this, and get on with my life.

Then there's the "I still want to be friends" issue. Another major sore spot. If any of the other people I consider friends had done something like this to me, they would no longer be welcome in my life. Friends don't just walk away, and expect you to be happy about it. Maintaining a friendship can also be work, and I keep thinking that when that happens, he'll once again decide it requires too much effort on his part, and walk away again. With that in mind, I'm not sure I want him as a friend. If it weren't for the ten years we spent together, I'd write him completely out of my life. But now I feel too confused to make that decision. I alternate between hating him and still loving him, and I don't know how I really feel. I suppose time will help with that, and then I'll be able to make the decision of whether or not I want him in my life at all.