Unlucky in Love

This weekend I broke up with my boyfriend. We’d been seeing each other for just over a year. I had hoped that this relationship might have been IT. You know, my happy ever after. Things didn’t work out though. I have a history of things not working out.

My high school boyfriend dumped me, on his mother’s advice. We had dated for two years. According to his mother, I was not a suitable match. He had just graduated from high school; his mother wanted him to get married and have babies. I wanted to go to college. At seventeen, I wasn’t ready to commit a lifetime to anyone.

My college boyfriend dumped me on New Year’s Eve 1999. We had dated about five years. We’d had a somewhat tumultuous relationship, as many college relationships are. He cheated on me; I cheated on him. We separated a few times throughout the years. He was my first real love. I decided I was ready to settle down and get married. He said he wouldn’t because I wouldn’t convert to his religion. Not that he was particularly religious; he went at Easter and Christmas, and whenever we went to church with his family. I said I would agree to raise children with his religion, but that compromise didn’t work. He married someone else in December 2000.

In 2001, I was introduced to one of my boss’ clients. He seemed like a nice guy, 10 years older though. We didn’t have much in common, but we had fun together. As the relationship progressed, he became more controlling, more demanding. We started going to the gym together because I needed to get in better shape for him. We hung out with his friends because mine were too immature for him. He wanted me to grow my hair long, because he liked long hair. At the time, my hair was super short; I’d had long hair in high school, and it was a pain. I started to resent his increasingly insistent demands, and so we broke up.

A year later, I started seeing an old college friend. I’d always known that he liked me, but we’d never dated. I thought I might have found my happy ending. We didn’t have a hot and heavy, fireworks exploding relationship, but it was nice and comfortable. I moved in with him after a year together. We had our differences. I was orderly to the point of obsession; he was a slob. I paid my bills as soon as they arrived; he’d let them pile up and tended to pay them late. I had an aloof Persian mix; he had a hyper Border Collie mix. A month after I moved in, he lost his job. For six months, I supported us. I worked two jobs to keep the roof over our heads and food on the table. He stayed home and drank. He was depressed about being unemployed (even though he was holding out for “just the right job”); I was annoyed with being the responsible one. Eventually, our anger escalated into violence. It was easy to hide the bruises from my friends and co-workers (they knew though). One night, a fight resulted in a broken coffee table and a broken ankle (mine unfortunately). That was it. A year after I moved in, I bought a house and moved out.

After that fiasco, I was alone for over three years. I had my house, my friends; I adopted a dog. Life was working out nicely. But I was starting to get kind of lonely. One of my co-workers convinced me to sign up for an online dating site. The third guy I went out with was my Prince Charming. I didn’t think he would be the one for me- he was divorced with a young child. But I fell in love with him, and his son. Our relationship rolled along smoothly, until one night, after a few glasses of wine, I proposed….. and he said nothing. That bombshell lingered for about a month. I decided to face the situation, so I invited him over a nice romantic dinner and asked the question again…. And again, he said nothing. At that point, I realized my happy ending wasn’t going to happen, but I was afraid of losing him and the pseudo-family I sought to create. In the end, I faced my fear, and I got the answer I had expected. He didn’t want to marry; he was content with the status quo. I wasn’t though, and it took me another three months to gather my courage. Of course, the end of our relationship was further hastened by my pending unemployment. I was so stressed about what I was going to do about my career that I deliberately tried to provoke some kind of emotion from him. He had always been so rational (it was something that I admired, and something that annoyed me to no end). And he remained rational, to my bitter, tear-choked end.

So here I am, almost 20 years after my first date, still single. The older I get, the more it bothers me. The older I get, the more I want a husband, a baby, a happy life. The older I get, the more I realize it’s not likely to happen.