The end of the affair

It was weird to see you yesterday. Partly good, partly butterflies-in-my-stomach. I didn’t know how to feel/respond when you told me about you two moving in together. Of course, as I’m sure I will always feel, it makes me a little uneasy thinking of you with another woman. I’m sure I’ll always dislike thinking about you with someone else, and I can guess that you don’t particularly like to think of me with another man.

When you asked me if I was capable of having an affair that would lead nowhere (as that’s what I believe you meant by “emotionless”), I wasn’t sure what my answer was. Have I ever had a true affair? No. Am I personally CAPABLE of it? Yes.

I realized, though, that I could only have an affair with a man who didn’t make me feel like the second choice. With you, I will always feel like I’m the runner up, the one that is great in bed, and yet not quite worth it. I don’t know how to explain it. I know this and I realize that a year ago, two years ago, I would have said yes anyway. I would have been inspired by the passion, the excitement.

Yet, now, I see this for what it is, second best. It’s a shabby lie of a life, and I don’t believe want to experience it with you. It’s wrong to do to both of them, no matter how passionate we are together and how that passion doesn’t quite come out when we are with them.

You know what I think? I value YOU too much to have an affair with you. It’s not going to end well, and it’s actually insulting to everything we ever had together. You and I were passionate. Sure, we fought, we argued, we made each other miserable. But we were honest. And the passionate side of our relationship was amazing. I really never could have cheated on you and I don’t want to throw all of our history away on a physical affair. I don’t want to know that all our experiences together come down only to sex. It makes everything we had, everything you made me feel, seem worthless. It invalidates 3 years of my personal life. I realized that I always want our interactions to be meaningful, inspiring, and cheating is none of those things.

So, that is why I’m not interested. Because I care too much about what we’ve had and recognize its value. And that’s the difference, because to you, I’ll always be second best.