Robert and I sat on the beach. We had driven up the Pacific Coast Highway. I was feeling restless, agitated. The sun was beginning to set, and as I sat with myself and my thoughts, trying to figure out how best to express to my husband what I was telling myself that I needed, and wanted, and how to say it in the most sensitive and loving way, and knowing it would be as difficult for him to understand as it was for me to articulate, it all came out wrong.
But is there any good way to say that you want more space to yourself and might need to move out without sounding like you want to break up?
“Maybe we can still stay married, but I can just get my own place?” I pondered.
Robert leaned back with eyes blinded by shock and confusion. We hadn’t been married that long and I was sure he didn’t expect or want to hear the words I’d just said. I didn’t want to be saying them. I tried to explain I was at such odds with myself. I told him that he was responsible for so much goodness in my life. He was never physical, forceful, or demanding. He didn’t demean me.
Instead, he lifted me up and supported me. He let me be as wild and weird as I wanted.
I was coming up on my twenty-fifth year of this existence. I had been sober for about four years, and I felt like I had grown and blossomed. I had worked to get closer again with my family.
I had begun to study, make art, and create a jewelry line. I was traveling the world, my work was thriving, and I was able to purchase whatever my heart desired. My life was everything compared to where and what I had come from. I was still going to therapy, and it seemed to be working. But it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t relate to being married at such a young age. I was hungry for life. I was restless.
I had never lived on my own. I had never established what could be mine. I sensed there was so much to my journey that I hadn’t experienced yet. I was full of insecurities, questions, and unspeakable trauma that I needed to figure out.
I held Robert’s hand and stroked his fingers. I hoped he could feel my love and gratitude. I reiterated how much I loved him. But I felt like I was living for someone else again, and I sensed I had to figure out who I was and learn how to love that person before I could be in a successful, sustainable, loving marriage. I didn’t know if that made sense.
I had settled down with Robert at such a young age, only a month after turning twenty-one, and our relationship included expectations that I wasn’t able to meet. I was aware that Robert, sixteen years older than me, was at a different place in his life than I was with mine, including his desire to start a family. We never had that conversation or any of the others involving our wants and wishes for the future. We lived together, even slept beside each other, but our lives were in different places.
The only time I allowed myself to acknowledge the truth inside me was when I caught my reflection alone in the bathroom. Or when I woke up in the middle of the night with questions swirling in my head. Did I want to build a life with Robert? Or had I let him save mine when it needed saving? Why didn’t I feel like the person I was supposed to be? Did I want more? Or did I want something else? Deep down I didn’t want to admit that I knew the answer.
The previous Christmas Robert bought us matching mountain bikes and we rode them through the neighborhood and up to the Griffith Observatory. Exercise agreed with me and all the energy I had. I added jogging, hiking, and yoga to my routine. Then I discovered Pilates when my jewelry-making friend Suzanne introduced me to a studio on the westside, where, upon walking in the first time, I sensed the calming aura of its healing energy. It was also where I met my new teacher, Jay.
When I had the courage to be truthful with myself, I knew he was the catalyst for the conversation I had with Robert. Jay was beautiful. He was Australian and closer to me in age. He had fair skin, dark black hair, and freckles. He was tall and fit. His body was chiseled to statue-like perfection. He was teaching Pilates while in school pursuing a degree in Chinese medicine.
A few times a week, I got in my car and drove thirty minutes to the Westside to take classes—and of course to see Jay. I wasn’t conscious of what was really happening, but later I saw that every time I drove to take a Pilates class from Jay, I was gradually driving myself further away from my husband.
I loved Robert. We had a beautiful little life together, and I had flourished within it. I had discovered myself in the streets of Berlin, climbed the unfinished turrets of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, discovered the mysterious Giza pyramids and explored the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, where a man had asked Robert how many camels he could trade for me. We walked the narrow alleyways through Ravello on Italy’s Amalfi Coast and bought cans of tuna for the stray alley cats in Rome. We bought fresh goods from the bakery in the mornings in Braunschweig and walked through the beautiful parks in the fall. We traveled everywhere. We lived, and loved, and made a home for each other, wherever we went. A Tiffany frame on our bedside held a picture from our latest adventure. Life was peaceful, prosperous, and easy.
Then one day, as I tried to explain to Robert, I knew that I had to leave it—and sadly, painfully, inexplicably, that day had come.