a relationship that ended, not failed

I was dating for the first time, after a six year long relationship.

Someone asked, “Why did your last relationship fail?”

I said, “It didn’t.”

“OK then why didn’t it work out?”

I said, “It did!”

We’re not still together, but it was great from beginning to end.

It started with an email. “Hi. My name is Anna. A happy girl in Sweden. You sound really interesting. Please tell me more about yourself.”

I thought it was probably spam, but before deleting it, just in case, I replied “Who are you and why do you think I’m interesting?”

She replied. I replied. She replied with more. I replied with more. Once a day, at the end of the day, a single email. Because we were strangers on the other side of the world, we got more and more honest, like a confession booth, saying the things we wouldn’t tell anyone else.

After three months of emailing, we switched to real-time chat. After six months, for the first time, she sent me her photo. She was hot! I flew to Sweden and it was on.

After two years of visiting each other, she moved to America to be with me. A year later, we got secretly married, only for immigration. She moved to Los Angeles for film school, so I moved with her.

We got along so well, just happy to be together. In six years, we had only one fight, for about ten minutes, about whose turn it was to clean the bathroom. That was it. Six years of sweet romantic harmony.

But our interests were pulling us in different directions. I wanted to spend more time working in Portland. She wanted to spend more time with her friends in LA that were single and having adventurous flings — an experience she’d never had.

After a movie on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, we sat on a bench having a lemonade, talking about this, then one of us said it first.

“Do you want to break up?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Yeah. You’re not upset?”

“Not at all. Are you hurt?”

“No. Wow. We just broke up.”

“Yeah. End of an era. So… now what?”

Best breakup ever. We walked home together, drinking our lemonades, sharing our plans for what we wanted to do next.

We went to sleep in the same bed that night, but at 4am I woke up excited, packed my car, kissed her goodbye, and drove sixteen hours to Portland. I never saw her again. We only talked for a few minutes, later that year, to file the divorce stuff. Life moves on.

Someone asked, “Why did your last relationship fail?”

But it didn’t. It was a great relationship, and was just what we needed. I remember it fondly.

A relationship, like a movie or book, doesn’t fail when it comes to an end.