Every year, right around Valentine’s Day, I go see my accountant. She’s done my taxes every year for over a decade and, for a time, she also did my ex boyfriend’s taxes. She always asks about him and our friends whom we had also brought to see her. Our friends still go to her for their taxes, but he stopped coming after we broke up. Mind you, it was as simple as his mother didn’t like me. We’re still friends, we still love and respect one another to an immense degree, and every year without fail, I get my favorite flowers for my birthday. He’s not someone I would ever go back to, but every year, so long as he and I are single, I have to hear about him from my tax lady.
He and I have been broken up for several years, we don’t speak with any regularity or ever see one another, but there’s a common history, a common core of beliefs about the world around us that will always be a tether back to one another and it’s this one day a year when I’m reminded. His friends still come to get their taxes done here and so my tax lady always asks how he’s doing. He’s still single – in 15 years, I’m the only girlfriend he’s had and his friends don’t see that changing, but the power of his mother’s disapproval is so big that there is no path forward.
When we were dating I was regularly preaching. I lead a pretty big team of people each week doing good around the city. I had a great job in the industry and held a lot of events that were fancier than I’ll ever be personally. His mother was a stay at home mom and raised her children alongside her husband of nearly 50 years. She didn’t feel it was right for a woman to lead so many people, be so focused outside of a home life, and most importantly, as a staunch Catholic, she didn’t believe a woman should be the one teaching God’s Word.
My ex is one of the best men I’ve ever known. He was always supportive, generous, patient, funny, wise and above all, kind. We spent our time serving others, dreaming up new ways to help our city and making messes in the kitchen. He’d be the first one to come help me with something at the house, the last one to leave dinner parties we would attend, always so we could help clean up together. We laughed the loudest at comedy shows and he was never afraid to cry in the theater. He loves his nieces and nephews, he cares about mine, he helped with fundraisers for any and every church effort I lead.
But his mom…
In truth, I’m okay with it. He was not the love of my life.
It was a gut-wrenching break up. It didn’t make sense at the time and I spent more hours crying on my patio over him than I care to remember, but the real hurt came years later. He asked if we could get back together, but to not share our lives publicly so that it never got back to his mother. She’s older, she’s not in the best of health and one day her disapproval would no longer matter. He didn’t want to lose anymore years, but didn’t want his mother to be upset in her last years.
That moment set me free. I’ll always love him – as a person, as a friend and as a brother. But that ask, that idea ended my romantic feeling for him forever. And he knows that. To have considered keeping me a secret to the most important person in his life was beyond my comprehension. Putting aside for a moment that I wouldn’t be the most important person to him, and putting aside the ridiculousness of her disapproval of me, the real hurt was that I cared for his mother and if these were her last years, I wouldn’t want him to go through caring for her alone. I also knew she wants her son married and to have a family – on so many levels this ask felt both selfish and cowardly. It felt less than us, what we were capable of and like the biggest, the brightest, the best part of us would be hidden. It would be lost to fear. I’ve never been afraid of failure, but I refuse to fail because of fear.
It’s not like I mind hearing about him, but this year something felt very different. When I told her I’d moved on, she went on about how great we were together and how she hopes we can figure it out at some point, but the warm feeling I used to get thinking about what once was no longer filled me. In another blog coming soon I’ll elaborate more, but simply put, I now know so many more men like him and the pedestal I once had him on has long since been dismantled. When he and I were together, he was the first man that gave me a better sense of partnership after a long line of so many poor choices. I don’ think I had really believed a partnership was possible or even a reality. I’d never really seen it modeled, let alone experienced it. Family Ties and the Keaton family were as close as I’d gotten. Looking back on the last several years I’ve begun to see why and how I’ve evolved so far beyond that time.
When I shared that with her, she turned around and went into her wallet to pull out a picture. She and a man she’d dated 21 years prior, a double sided, laminated photo of the two of them together. She said she still loves him and keeps in touch from time to time, but he had issues that were too big for her she said. She was glad I’d moved on, but said “you never know – one day he might get his act together.” Thing is, I don’t have that in me. My life is a beautiful work that I spent too much time cultivating to hang it on the wall of someone else “getting their act together.” I know what she means and I do sincerely hope my ex finds the woman for him, but I’m okay with what I have and who I am now – with or without a man by my side. I’m thankful to have little moments like the one with my tax lady every year to help remind me of the growth I’ve fought so hard to both gain and withstand. Valentine’s Day has never been a romantic holiday to me, but always quite reflective. May yours be as fulfilling.
