We were sitting at a bar and I had knocked back an entire pint of Guinness while he was nursing something paler. I had a lump in my throat as I searched for literally anything to say that would break the silence between us. In less than two weeksâ time, he would be moving across the country. We had been dating without a label for a few months, and while we agreed that we would stay in touch after he moved, I knew that stuff between us was going to change drastically.
I didnât want it to; we really, really liked each other and he knew I was taking his impending departure pretty hard. âWould it be easier if I were a jerk to you now?â he asked, smiling. I was unsure, I told him. We laughed.
When long term relationships end, thereâs usually some period of time leading up to that point where things are going south. You start to see the cracks getting bigger and bigger until the foundation finally collapses. In the days, weeks, months after the breakup, you can take (some) solace in remembering all the things about your ex you didn’t like. You can remind yourself of why it didn’t work outâwhy it wouldn’t have worked out. But when a relationship ends before any negative feelings have a chance to develop, you donât get any of that closure. You realize you never knew the person well enough to find out what you donât like about them.
While some of my other non-starters have ended for tangible reasons like geography, most ended simply because the other party lost interest. One day they would stop texting back, and once I realized it probably wasnât because their phone was dead, I’d lose any sense of hope about what lay ahead for us. We were never going to pore over the Sunday New York Times while drinking coffee he made for us. I would never take him to meet my friends for drinks after work. We would never rent movies or make dinner together or any of that gross stuff.
I was talking to a well-meaning person after one of these non-starters ended about how much I missed my almost-but-not-quite ex boyfriend, and she said, âWell, you never really had him.â She wasnât wrong, but I think that the pain we feel when non-starters end could be lessened if we gave ourselves permission to go through them like we go through more traditional breakups. Instead of pressuring ourselves and our friends to simply âget over it,” what if we admitted it was okay to take some time to grieve?
Whatever grieving looks like to you: hide them on social media. Delete all text, email and app exchanges. Delete their number. Delete pictures. Cry in the shower. Go out dancing with your friends. Stay in on a Saturday night to watch bad TV and order a pizza. Dye your hair. Say youâre going to join a gym. Go once and decide you hate it and just start walking everywhere instead.
Itâs painful to feel a connection with someone and then not be able to see where it goes, and pain that goes unacknowledged isnât good for anyone. So donât try to tough it out. Donât try to get over it immediately just because it seems silly to be so upset over someone you were never really âwith.â Feel it, and then remind yourself that thereâs at least one thing about this person that would’ve driven you up a wall. In fact, probably more than one thing. You just never got to see any of it, and maybe thatâs a good thing.