I debated this question last night as I was trying to fall asleep. While I think it would be cathartic to dissect this most recent of my relationship failures, I could do it in a journal, or in a letter to a friend. A blog (regardless of its readership numbers) is an awfully public place to examine something that involved two private people.

On the other hand there are certain people who read this blog as their only communication with me, who seem, for whatever reasons, to have a genuine interest in my life and to care for me and what's going on with me.

So I want to post something, but I'll try to stick to the things that directly had/have to do with me. It's not fair to disparage CB. He's still the same wonderful guy he was when he was my boyfriend. And, in the larger sense, not counting some words that could have been redacted, neither of us did anything wrong. Those things that sabotage more rooted relationships than ours-- infidelity, jealousy, selfishness--they weren't what ended things.

Here are the things that I did wrong:
I didn't listen to my gut in the very beginning. "Listen to your heart" is a great name for a song, but it doesn't always work in the real world. Sometimes you should listen to those voices from your past experience. Mine were saying things like: "But you know that a long distance relationship broke your heart into pieces, some of which are still only attached with duct tape--do you want to go through that again? Should you want to go through that again?" The past was asking me hard and hurtful questions like "Do you want this just to prove it can work?" A voice from my present, namely my brother, was also quite loud and persistent: "Why do you always choose unavailable men?"

My heart was louder. "You love him, you love him. He's not unavailable--or if he is, it's only temporary. You love him, you can do this. You can make it work. You never stopped loving him from when you knew him in college. You compared every guy to him. Here's your chance. Make it work."

I love him. I listened to my heart.

And I'll admit the idea of coming full circle was alluring. The reasons for relationships, for loving someone, are complicated. Deep inside, I have always chastised myself for not waiting until marriage to have sex. Whatever you might call that, it's there. And somehow the idea of ending up with the gentle, loving man I started with was somehow redemptive. Not to mention romantic and wonderful. It would be like all that went in between--the guilt, the fear, the betrayals-- never happened.

We were so good together, when we were actually physically together. It's flicking at the raw to wonder too much if we could have made it in the same country. I think we could have, but I'll never know. I so much wanted for this to be it. But it takes more than that. As another song proclaims: "Sometimes Love Just Aint Enough."