Finding Home in Someone Else

Heaven when you’ve got it, hell when you don’t.

I wrote this last year, and it sat in my drafts. It was too close to home and I didn’t want to receive commentary on something precious to me. But it’s been months, and I want to clear out my drafts folder, so here goes.

I stumbled upon a Ted Talk by Najwa Zebian. She begins by reading a passage.

“The biggest mistake that we make is that we build our homes in other people. We build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and respect that we want to come home to at the end of the day. We invest in homes in other people, and we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. And when those people walk away, those homes walk away with them, and all of a sudden we feel empty because everything that we had within us, we put in those homes. We trusted someone else with pieces of us. That emptiness that we feel doesn’t mean that we have nothing to give, or that we have nothing within us. It’s just that we built our home in the wrong place.” -Najwa Zebian

Every time I read it, I feel shattered all over again. That’s some profound stuff right there. When I read it, my eyes well up (every frickin’ time) and I think of Jon, the guy I fell in love with in 2019.

My marriage ending isn’t the most traumatic breakup I’ve had in the past decade. I held on for the kids, not for any emotional reasons. My love for him was gone.

The most traumatic one I’ve had has been with Jon, the guy I had an affair with last year (yes, troll me and tell me what a horrible human I am). With a dead bedroom and a marriage on its last legs, it was easy to gravitate to him.

We met on a site where neither of us had any intention of meeting anyone. He was closing his account after his hall pass from his wife who cheated on him. I went on there because my husband had yet again rejected me, and I wanted further validation beyond the fetish site I was on.

Being a plastic surgeon, he commented on a scar visible in a picture. It was a good hook; patients are eager to talk about their surgery with other people, especially doctors. We began messaging each other.

Still, we didn’t meet up. I sent him the link to my fetish site profile, displaying not only a million pictures of myself but also my journal entries (pre-Medium era). Everything about me was in there. Every raw emotion, every time I was angry, upset, struggling with life, my craziness…it was all in there. Jon read it all and said, “I’m intrigued.”

What the hell dude. Do you not see how broken I am? I didn’t understand Jon’s motivations when I was clearly a hot mess. He reassured me that we’re all broken and sent me the link to a tragic accident that killed 3 of his brothers. It was the most sincere response I’d ever received when wallowing in my flaws.

I didn’t intend on it becoming anything serious. Part of me assumed he was a stereotypical smug doctor and I wanted to be a dick to him because…I don’t know, to put him in his place because how dare people who go to medical school be smug? But then I saw him for the first time and he gave me the biggest, heart-melting smile.

Other guys I’d had quick hookups with never actually smiled. They had more of a “yo, wassup” vibe when meeting. No one wanted to appear eager and interested.

The way Jon pursued me was something I hadn’t experienced since my university boyfriend. My laissez-faire attitude allowed me to be myself because I didn’t care if he liked me or not. Part of me figured he’d bail when he got to know me better anyway.

But…he didn’t. And unlike past relationships, he never asked me to change any part of me. We became inseparable, despite rarely getting to see each other between our jobs and the whole sneaking-around-because-we’re-cheating thing.

Maybe it flourished the way it did because we spent so much of it just talking and writing. The physical component was the icing on the cake. Not to say that it wasn’t exciting; we boned in a movie theater, early mornings in the car, outside of a bar in broad daylight, in a hotel lobby, and there was a formal naked photoshoot. Coming from a dead bedroom marriage, it was exciting for me.

I’ve spent most of my life showing only parts of myself and tiptoeing around others. I felt like a caged animal in my marriage, often being told that I should reword something a certain way or caused fights from my sarcasm. With Jon, I didn’t censor myself. There was no restraint.

I was just…me.

Not that I wasn’t insecure. He lives in a part of Orange County that is known for excessive beauty. Jon’s job had him looking and touching naked women’s bodies daily. With both of us cheating on our spouses, there were trust issues. Despite that, I still envisioned the fantasy of us one day working things out.

Jon’s wife had busted him at the beginning of our relationship. I was fine walking away back then, but he convinced me to stick around. (To my defense, she cheated on him first. They were a disaster.) Fast forward to the next year, and he almost got caught again.

I panicked. I knew I wanted to end my marriage but we were in the middle of the pandemic, there was no way I could stay trapped in a house with turmoil stirred up by his wife. So I asked Jon if perhaps we should end our affair so that we could get out of relationship limbo with our spouses. He agreed, and we set a date of June 1st, 2020 to end things.

Perhaps we’re naïve, but we figured it was better to end things and figure out our marriage situations to give a better chance of relationship success down the road. Statistically, relationships that start from affairs don’t end well. This sacrifice was our best shot (we assumed).

The day arrived, we ended things, and it seemed okay. What didn’t help was that I had a surgery planned with Jon for 3 months in the future, so it was impossible to go radio silent.

As you can imagine, we didn’t do well for the rest of 2020. Despite him moving on with someone new, and me trying to go No Contact, neither of us could stop being in love with each other. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster and we’re gluttons for punishment.

If you’ve ever had a horrible relationship, rest assured that it is much better to leave that person than when it’s a breakup with the right person at the wrong time.

Since breaking up, things just didn’t feel right. I’ve had breakups before, it sucks for a while but eventually, you see the light. You feel happier without that person.

My heart is not happier.

Getting back together now would be a disaster. It’s not an option. Instead, when I think of Jon, I think of the past with regret. I regret suggesting the breakup. I regret that in October, when I had a huge epiphany that made me realize why we were perfectly matched, I didn’t tell him my thoughts. At that point, I realized his path post-breakup was different than mine and I didn’t want to say anything to distract him from it. Truthfully, I know I would have ended it with something reckless, like “fuck it, let’s go to Greece”. So while I may regret it, I know it’s what’s best for him.

As it stands, it’s on Jon to reach out to me months/years from now if he still feels anything. I know I’ll convince myself that he’s happy and I won’t get the courage if I still have feelings. I know I’ll turn it into a nonexistent game of chicken. So I told him that I’ll leave that on him.

I’m scared that I’ll always want to be with him but that I’ve lost him forever. (Yes, very melodramatic, I know how I sound.) It’s enormously difficult for me to voice that fear and I struggled typing it. I’m not a kid who is experiencing her first heartbreak. I’ve had dozens of breakups. This is unlike anything I’ve experienced because the best case scenarios are either moving on completely or making it work years from now. Both of those require the one thing out of my power to change: time.

Ending things was the right thing to do. I’m still in the thick of it all. It doesn’t help that unlike where he lives, my world is in complete lockdown. I received an advisory today that the kids’ school is back to 100% virtual which means I’m back to being both a full-time teacher and employee. The earliest my life will return to normal will be June 2021. That’s over a year after we began our quarantine.

I’m in solitary confinement and my brain wanders to the person who made me so utterly happy and excited for life. It’s torture. To make it worse, his name (I use his first name for my articles, he goes by his middle name) is unbelievably common. Even when I get respite from thoughts of him, I’m cruelly reminded courtesy of TV shows, scrolling movie credits, online videos, political news, memes, and…everything. It’s like being stuck in hell while being hit by bricks.

Conventional breakup advice states to go out with friends, explore new hobbies (eye roll), try new things to learn who you are now that you’re on your own. That’s drastically limited with coronavirus cockblocking me. I escaped to the dentist today and treated the dental hygienist as my best friend. I’m cracking at the seams, big time. At this rate, I’ll show up with tequila and shot glasses when I visit my OBGYN.

I’m reminded of Najwa Zebian’s passage I posted at the start of this article. It’s the only way I can describe how I felt with him. It fit. It felt right. It felt like home.

In the spirit of not turning my post into languishing misery, I’m acknowledging the things that wouldn’t have happened had we not broken up.

I wouldn’t have ended my marriage. I didn’t want to make the affair my reason for it. Ending the affair gave me focus and clarity. Otherwise, I’d still be in marital limbo.

I wouldn’t have finally gotten over a crap ton of childhood trauma. As usual, I would have continued to bury it down each time it reared its ugly head. It’s like dropping a bag of stones and I feel lighter.

As a result of the above two actions, I’m genuinely happier with myself. Never in my life have I gone this long without beating myself internally. I look at myself with kinder eyes.

My pre-pandemic self lacked any confidence. I went from being a weak Steve Rogers at the beginning of Captain America to the Super Soldier Serum version of him after. (I’m on my umpteenth round of watching Marvel movies because you know…pandemic.) My tolerance for things that make me feel bad has plummeted.

I’m a better version of a human now that I’ve focused on other areas of my life.

Thankfully, I’m excessively-logical thinking and possibly autistic. While my heart aches like a motherfucker right now (trillions of old wounds reopened upon receiving an email from him last night), I can logically tell myself that this is the worst of the storm. I’ve been in similar situations, where more time is the only solution.

I’m not wasting all that heartache. It has forced me to be creative in ways to make myself happier while stuck in a house with a separated husband and electronics-addicted children. It also forced me to mentally slap myself and say, “man the fuck up”.

Whichever direction life goes, I have to let time run its course. I have to trust the process.