Advice

I understand. I've been in your shoes.

I remember some night last fall when I drove up to visit my girlfriend. I had only recently begun working at Barnes & Noble and I was looking forward to just hanging out and lying around...basically, just spending some quality alone time with her.

But of course, that's not how things worked out. Though her roommate was gone for the night, several of her friends were there when I got there and even after they left, two friends remained. (Don't get me wrong. I really like her friends. They're nice, funny people who accepted me from the beginning and always made me feel welcome. In fact, I still talk to some of them online. It was just that this night, I didn't feel like being social.) At this point, most of the evening is a blur. All I remember now is being in a bad mood because I was worn out, hungry (but not in the mood for the Chinese food we got...and even when I resigned myself to the food, the Chinese place screwed up my order and didn't give me the sauce that goes with Peking Ravioli leaving my food unedible), and lonely.

(And I'd bet you ten to one that she asked me if I was okay and I said I was fine.)

Anyway, I ended up having basically no alone time with her and it was...I don't know how to describe it. But I know you know that feeling I'm talking about. I just wish I had remembered this occasion before your husband came home to visit. Because to subject someone else, especially you, my dear friend, to the feelings that I had to go through, makes me feel horrible.

Ever since June, I've felt like a part of a foursome of really good friends. All summer, when it came down to it, it was me and my sweetie and you and your sweetie. And we all had roles in our relationships, roles that went beyond man/woman or butch/femme. J & J were the protectors, the ones who would readily lay down their lives for the woman they loved. You and I would have also laid down our lives for our significant others, but we realized that we had to give them a certain degree of space. Though we worried about them, we had to let them live their lives and just support them. However, it didn't end there. Each one of us played a specific role in the relationship of the other couple. The one I experienced the most was the role that your husband played in being a continuous matchmaker for me and my beloved. For whatever reasons, every once in awhile (and I think this was primarily done in the fall), your husband only had to say three words: She loves you. (Or sometimes four: She still loves you.) He played a very important role in my relationship. All this is to say that now I feel like the roles have reversed somewhat. Now I'm the one trying to do the reassuring. And so, in that vein, let me tell you that your husband loves you very much. He wants to spend the rest of his days with you.

There's more that I want to say to you. I just hope that I can make it make sense, because I have a hard time explaining these thoughts. (Heck, I started this journal entry a week ago! And I've been thinking these things for a few months now.)

Damn, unfortunately, I've lost my train of thought. At least I got some of it out. And if you get nothing else out of this entry, remember: He loves you.

Oh, I'm getting flashes of what I had originally set out to talk about. I wanted to explain that I also understand the feelings that I'd bet you're feeling. Because I know how I felt last fall when I couldn't give my girlfriend what she needed. She needed her friends from school, she needed her theatre work, and she needed her school. I couldn't give any of it to her. Heck, through all of November and December, I couldn't even visit her at home because of her parents. Every once in awhile, she'd tell me about how she and anyone of her friends had gone driving when she was feeling distressed. While I was glad that she felt better afterwards, I felt sad that I couldn't help her, that someone else had to help her because I couldn't. Part of me didn't understand since she could have (and often did) supply all the answers to my problems. She was my proverbial knight in shining armor. So why wasn't I hers?

It has happened since we broke up as well, though not as much (there's another whole entry on that to put up). Sometimes I don't understand the connection between our significant others. Rather, it's not so much that I don't understand it, but I'm jealous of it. I don't know how to explain it with anything more than what I've already written. So let me tell you why it doesn't bother me most of the time. Because it's a gift that I'm grateful for. Because it means that someone will know if anything ever happens to her. I know that she probably won't tell me when she's feeling sick and I know that my concerns for her health will fall upon deaf ears. But if something happens, he will know. It means she's not really alone. She can be independent and self-reliant but I know someone's got her back, so to speak.

That's still not all I've been thinking, but those are the basics. I wish you would talk to me about it. After all, I can relate. And maybe I can help. Give it a thought.