Jake Barton

"Does it make you uncomfortable when I tell you that I still love you?"

I was feeling uneasy. After nearly a year apart I had reached out to my best friend, the man I had fallen in love with, hoping to rebuild a relationship with him. I had spent the better part of a week preparing myself mentally and emotionally for this conversation, and I had finally spoken the words out loud. He brushed my words aside and redirected the conversation to some other topic. I didn't know what else to say after that, so I opened up and uttered the only thing on my mind. I held my breath, waiting for his response. The silence was crushing me inside. Finally, he spoke up.

"I don't know that it makes me uncomfortable... There's a big part of me that still loves you, but not in the same way." He stuttered, "I care about you a lot-"

And there it was. I knew where he was going, and the words he was about to speak weren't going to matter, because he had already said it all. Everything I had prepared for, all of the courage I had to muster just to speak up, gone.

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My friend and I met four and a half years ago, during my Sophomore year at USU. Him and I came out to one another, and a friendship blossomed. Several months later, I took a leap of faith and confessed for the first time, that I was in love with him. He cried and told me that he was in love with me as well. I have shared some of the very most vulnerable moments of my life with him even since that night.

I loved him.

At some point, he forgot how to love me back.

I've often questioned, pondering, wondering if he ever meant it. What had happened? I haven't forgotten all the wonderful memories that we've shared. Does he think about those memories? Does he even remember them? I'm not so sure now that those experiences were actually as genuine as I remember them being.

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I sat there paralyzed as he continued speaking, "Even though I don't know that I feel the same way that I used to, I care enough about our friendship that I want you to be involved in my life."

He hasn't really been involved in my life since this conversation. This was back in February of this year.

"I'm trying to figure out what a good balance is, knowing how you feel and knowing how I feel-"

I could tell he was feeling nervous, probably due to how awkward this conversation was for him.

"I'm trying to find a balance so that it doesn't feel like I'm taking advantage of you, knowing how you feel, while also not lying to myself and conveying something that I'm not really feeling. I care about you a lot and things mean a lot to me physically, but they're probably going to mean a lot more to you than they do to me. I don't want to cut things off physically because even though we do feel differently, I don't feel like that means that we shouldn't have anything at all. I hope we can find a way to meet our physical needs, while making this as authentic as possible to both of our experiences."

I sat there, stunned. I thought things might be different this time. But here he was telling me in so many words "I want to keep hooking up, without committing to this". Just like we had been doing for years. I had thought that all the time we had taken apart might change things.

I was wrong, obviously.

You have to understand, the majority of our relationship was spent just hooking up. We had officially dated for one month, but we acted like a couple in almost every sense of the word for years. We spent most of our time together, and he was my closest confidant. But he wasn't really invested, at least not in a romantic sense. I loved him and I wanted him to love me back, and all of the intimacy that we experienced meant a great deal to me emotionally.

Sitting there after having said all that he just had, I felt sick. Not much was said after that, and I left with a queasy feeling in my stomach.

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Lana Del Rey sings the following words in one of my favorite songs of hers:

Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, I don't know why.
(Skip ahead to 1:14)

I've often pause after this point in the song, just to sit with my thoughts. Growing up I was taught that love was the most important thing in the entire world. And when two people love each other then things should work out. But sometimes love isn't enough and things don't work out. Sometimes your parents get divorced after 25 years of marriage. Sometimes your aunt stays with her husband because he emotionally scares her, even though she should leave him and find a better life. Sometimes the grandfather who's responsible for leading the family, is the one who destroys the lives' of those you care about. Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, but I really don't know why that is.

I found love and I tried to nurture it as best as I could. I made a lot of mistakes in my relationship with this friend, and I attribute the collapse of our relationship to a lot of those mistakes. Now I'm trying to move on, and I even tried dating someone else (which is a whole different can of worms, and a story which I still can't figure out why things ended the way they did exactly).

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A few months after this last conversation I reached out to my friend once again. To summarize our conversation I asked him if he was still interested in this friendship between us and to paraphrase, he said:

"I'm not the greatest at having a continuous verbal or active friendship with people that are far away from me. It's easier for me to get distracted with people around me because I'm more of a social person. I do care about you but it doesn't make sense to me to make a constant effort to try and connect with you when I don't feel actual connection over text or Facebook and our lives are busy and far enough away that it's not realistic to hang out all the time like we used to."

Him and I don't talk much at all anymore. I texted him the other day and he didn't respond. There's a good chance he just forgot to... but maybe not. I don't know what to do with this relationship any longer. I've had several people tell me that I should move on. But my heart tells me not to let go, even if it is hurting me. Maybe that's just it: I need to let go for good. Holding on is a futile effort. Maybe he's already moved on and I'm clinging to something that isn't even there. A figment of my imagination, the visions of a lunatic, reaching for things that don't exist.

Maybe he doesn't know what a real friend is. Maybe I don't know what a real friend is. I've had a few good friendships, and I can say this: when I'm truly engaged in a relationship, I'm 100% in. To a fault sometimes. I would drop everything and drive across the state if a close friend needed me. I would commute from Logan to West Jordan and back every day if that meant having a close friendship with him still. It sounds insane when I write it, but I just feel like that's what I would do to keep an important relationship alive.

I wish I could go back and redo that relationship. I would have treated him better instead of letting my insecurities push him away. I wouldn't have been so mean and said so many hurtful things. I would have worked on respecting boundaries more. I would have been more patient. I wouldn't have gotten so jealous over every little thing he did. I would have loved him unconditionally and not pushed him so much.

And even if I could go back and redo it all, things still might not have worked out. Because sometimes love is not enough. The road is long, we carry on, and try to have fun in the meantime.