The next day we did touristy things before heading to the party that night. Although G seemed happy enough, I could tell something was off. Once we found his friends, he was much more at ease. I, on the other hand, would have been just as happy had we never found them. Although they were all extremely nice to me, I felt like a bit of an outsider not being able to speak Spanish. The big birthday bash proved to be a challenge for each of us. He wanted to reconnect with people but he had to balance that with the time he spent with me. And since I wasn’t yet fluent in Spanish, he had to translate everything on both sides. I’m sure it was exhausting.
By the time we left Colombia a few days later, something had been lost that could never be replaced. We both knew it. The flight home was awkward. The days to follow were no different. After avoiding the topic for a few days, we met at home and tackled the obvious. Through many tears, we chose to end our relationship while promising to grow our friendship. Many people start out after a breakup with that intention and fail. But we were determined to do it. To make it even tougher, we hadn’t even moved into the home we’d just bought together. But we knew that if we could get through the awkward post-breakup phase, we could do anything.
In the following months, the emotional roller coaster kicked in. We moved into our house, into our separate bedrooms, and tried to figure out how to reconfigure our routines so they didn’t involve each other.
It was not an easy day when one of us had the first date after our breakup, but we weathered that storm as well. Eventually both of us landed in relationships while remaining under the same roof. Our friends were simply amazed we chose to do this since they had only known us as a couple. Time and again I would hear, “And you two are STILL living together?” Or “What does your boyfriend think of that?” I guess I was selfish enough to not really care what friends or boyfriends thought about it. We seemed to find a middle ground that worked for us and everyone else needed to get there however they could.
