The Painful Truth

My Most Recent Relationship

As promised in my first blog post, I've come to tell the tale of my last relationship. The boy's name throughout this post will be L and I'm going to do my best to tell you the story of our relationship as I grew to love and cherish it. 

L and I have been friends since about the 9th grade. We knew each other before that because of band, we both played the trumpet. L and I have several mutual friends and we would hang out when our mutual friends were together and that was about the extent of our friendship. As we continued through high school, L and I got closer and hung out more often but we had never considered dating each other. Senior year came around and we had AP Literature together 1st period. Several of our other friends were in that class and so it was really fun. L started coming over to my desk every morning during the announcements after our actual class period was over. We would just talk and goof off and I didn't really think anything of it. We started texting quite a bit though and one day we were talking about Emma Watson being gorgeous (we are both Harry Potter fans) and he replied with I can think of someone cuter and I responded with a different gorgeous celebrity but I was surprised when he replied with "No, you." So then I definitely caught on to the flirty vibe and not too long after that he asked me to go hiking with him. We decided to go on Halloween because we were out of school that day. It was a blast! I really enjoyed the non-traditional first date. Later that night I had him and some other friends come over and we watched a dumb scary movie. (Both of us hate scary movies.) We hung out several more times and one night he kissed me and I felt these awesome sparks in my belly. I hadn't been in a relationship for a year and so this kind of attention was amazing. Later on I found out that I was his first kiss, because he had been waiting for someone special and someone who it just felt right with. I was honored to be that person for him. On November 8th, 2014 L officially asked me to be his girlfriend. 

L's family travels on the holidays, so we didn't see each other on Thanksgiving or Christmas and when he finally came home from his Christmas trip, he was extremely sick with the flu and so I wasn't allowed to see him until New Year's Eve. We rung in the new year together and enjoyed each other's company. As our relationship grew, we discovered that we were each other's people. We had brilliant conversations about life, the world, and our experiences in them. L quickly became my best friend. A few days before I left for Nationals, L started acting kind of funny around me. We would be hanging out and he would just look at me in this way that I had never seen before. I would ask him what was going on but he would just kind of giggle and tell me that I would find out soon. It kept eating at me! The night before I left for Nationals L got really excited and decided to tell me what the looks he'd been giving me were all about. He told me that he loved me for the first time. We had only been dating for three months but I knew that it was real and was certain that I felt the same way. Having been friends already before we started dating allowed us to really focus on our relationship, so I knew that what he was confessing to me was honest. After we established our love, our relationship felt so strong and both of us were giddy with this newly defined step in our relationship. An exciting event was coming up for us: Spring Break! We were traveling on the same trip to Europe with our school. We got to spend ten days together exploring five different European countries and it was probably the most breath-taking and awe-inspiring trip I had ever been on. 

After our Spring Break trip, we were working on our last leg of high school. L and I spent a lot of our time together just figuring out more about each other. Something came up in our conversation one afternoon that was slightly bothersome. L had begun to lose his faith in God. L had spent most of his life in a Baptist church and yet as he got older he began to question God's existence. As a Christian myself, this frightened me and I began to worry. I prayed a lot for L's faith and yet I struggled with the idea that I didn't want to change him. I didn't want to make him feel like he had to be somebody he wasn't around me or to have to sacrifice his happiness. We didn't stall too much on this though and our relationship was still going extremely smooth. I had never been so in love with anyone else and it felt perfect. We graduated high school in May, he took me on an amazing date for my birthday in June, but we were about to face one of our biggest challenges yet. College.

L and I have very different dreams. As long as I have known him, I have known that he wanted to go to the AirForce Academy in Colorado. In the beginning of our relationship I wasn't worried about it, but as we got closer to graduation and then as our summer ended I knew we were quickly running out of time together.  L didn't get accepted into the Academy and so he was going to California for a semester to go to a prep school so he could up his chances at getting into the Academy. He was moving 25 hours away from me and I was nervous, sad, and overwhelmed about it. We spent just about as much time with each other as we could before we were going to move across the country from each other. Our love grew so very strong and L was truly my best friend. Over the course of our relationship, L liked to show how he felt about me through poetry. He wrote me really beautiful poems that were full of deep meaning and I could really feel how much he loved me through them. Moving away from L was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. He helped me move into my room on move-in day and then when I had to say good bye I couldn't help but let the tears flow. The very idea of him being across the country from me was terrifying. His poems pretty much kept me sane because they reminded me of the reasons I was in love with him. 

We couldn't talk very often because of bad WIFI at the prep school, the time difference, and scheduling conflicts. We celebrated our one year anniversary 25 hours away from each other, which was extremely hard. L finished up his semester in California before I finished up my first semester of college and he moved to Colorado with his older brother. I was so excited for him to come home some time over Christmas break, considering it had been almost five months since we had seen each other. We were finally able to FaceTime again and talk on the phone more often. One night as we were talking I mentioned something about his faith and he sort of blew up on me. As time had gone L had made the decision that he no longer believed in God at all. L was afraid that he couldn't fully be the man that I need him to be, a Godly man. I knew that I couldn't change his mind and honestly I didn't want to. I didn't want to try to make him be someone he isn't. Things got really tense between us and we stopped communicating well. I was afraid for the worst but I refused to let a break up happen over the phone or on a text message, so I asked L to promise that he would come home to try to talk things over.

When L came home, I had pretty much accepted what I thought was going to happen, but I was so ecstatic to see him after five long months. We had lunch together and caught up and gave each other the Christmas presents we had bought each other, but we knew the conversation that was hanging over heads had to happen at some point. Deep down, I know that in order to have a happy marriage later on in life I will have to marry a Christian man, but after over a year together, I didn't want to admit to myself the decision that I needed to make. As L and I discussed our religious differences and how each of us will change over the next four years while we are still in college, we realized that the smartest thing to do would be for us to break up. Though neither of us wanted this to happen, we decided that we had to be logical and realistic. It was devastating and hard to end our beautiful relationship when neither of us wanted to. I treasure what I had with L and I love him dearly, but I guess love isn't easy and neither is Christianity. Sometimes as Christians we have to make sacrifices to be more Christ-like just like Jesus did for us. Through my relationship with L I learned a lot about myself, love, and friendship. I cherish everything about our relationship and am grateful for the love that he showed me throughout. I pray that we might be able to maintain a friendship and continue to value what we learned from each other. ~ Em