#NerdsUnite: Confessions of an Unwed Bride (Maybe We Will Be Okay?)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet by buddy Julie! She's my roomie, we met on Craiglist, and she is 1,000 flavors of everything awesome sauce. The reason why she had a room in her apartment however is a mighty long story. See, Julie was dating a duderino for 8 years. Yep, they were engaged to be wed and all that snazzy jazzy stuff. Now the engagement is off and Julie is attempting to heal from her loss; these series of posts are her best attempt. HIT IT JULIE! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's ItsMeJoolie

Catch up on the story: read my reservations about writing out this story and here's Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI and Part VII of our ending.

January 17, 2011

After the 500 Days of Summer tour and the great couple of days that we have had it's time to have The Talk. I was on edge from the moment that we got back home from downtown. Was he going to move back in? Were we going to try and make this work?

He had moved in with a mutual female friend. Her lease was coming to an end that month and they were in talks about officially becoming roommates. This infuriated me. We were in a sensitive situation and I last thing I felt we needed was more fucking stress on making a decision concerning our relationship and the rest of our lives. I was so bitter towards her for this additional stress. It was bad enough that we were supposed to get married in two months.

That was a whole other thing. So everything that has been happening is bad enough, right? But add to all of this the pressure that we are supposed to say I Do to each other....so stressful. So we have The Talk and make two major decisions:

1) He is going to move back in and we are going to try and move forward.
2) We are going to cancel the wedding. He thinks that this is no way for us to get married and that it has been tainted.

January 20, 2011

When he moves back in I feel such relief. After living with him for 5 years (plus the two years prior we were almost always at each other's places) it just feels unbelievably weird to not have him in my daily life. With him home I feel so much relief.

I tell him if he wants to call off the wedding, he needs to be the one to contact the venue and cancel. I just can't bring myself to do it and I don't feel like I should have to given the circumstances.

January 24, 2011

Dear Julie and Xxxx,

We are so sorry that you two are having troubles. This confirms our conversation that your wedding is cancelled for Mar 20 2011. I am so very sorry for the troubles in your relationship, I will pray for your love to grow and strengthen. We look forward to your rebooking. Xxxx is hopeful for possible October this year. I would particularly cherish the opportunity of making all your dreams come true at that time.

Thank you for your kind words Xxxx and your understanding and agreement that we have to keep the non refundable wedding date lock in fee to cover all our losses on the blocked rooms and lost wedding date.  With your agreement and confirmation within 24 hour we will waive any further charges and we will start refunding your guests reservations. Please confirm this agreement and email.

You better believe I cried my fucking heart out after that hit my Inbox. No one should ever have to return a wedding dress. I wouldn't even wish that on the bitch he cheated on me with.

So what does it take to move forward after one party fucks the other party over so monumentally? Well, both people have to really want it. You can't try just because you think it's the right thing to do. I really tried. I made some serious fucking changes. Things he had complained about for years. But I probably should have actually done those things years prior. Too little, too late. He on the other hand, was still so torn. We had so much history together and I do believe that he wanted the life with me but you can't control your heart. He had very strong feelings for her. I don’t believe he tried. At all.

Here's a confession for you: I am a horrible cuddler. I have been told this not only by not just this ex but the one before him. My lack of cuddling skills was a HUGE issue for my ex. Huge. (This is just the worst because it's hard to control something you do when sleeping. I cannot help it if I roll over in the middle of the night. Or if I get hot from someone's body heat. Or if my neck cramps and it wakes me up.) A switch was made in my brain though. I was so GRATEFUL to have him back in my bed that I actually liked him holding me while we slept. It was nice to know he was there. So that was fixed.

Our sex life: I don't think there was ever a week where there wasn't some form of sexual activity at least 4 out of the 7 days of the week but it had gotten routine. However, ever since back in November when we realized things were falling apart our sex life had become amazing. Extremely passionate. Fixed.

Next up. Our social lives. We had spent a lot of our time in Los Angeles not going out a lot. At first we didn't have a lot of money. Then after he got the job, we were in different cities for happy hour and I didn't have a car. He had somehow gotten it into his head that I liked staying in every night (while it is true that I am naturally a homebody, this was and is not true). Part of the reason that things with him and her had been able to escalate as they did was because we weren't hanging out together anymore. Everyone in his office knew what was going on and what he had done. I was super, super embarrassed by this. I originally didn't want to hang out with any of them. But in my desperation, I conceded and started hanging out with his coworkers. I actually ended up really liking some of them and having a good time. Also, around this time his friend Mark started hanging out with us a lot. He and his girlfriend had just broken up and he was NOT handling it well. It was a relief for me to not be the one going on and on about my break up. He thought it was amazing that we were trying to make it work, not giving up. He crashed at our house a lot. I thought of us as the heartbreak club. The three of us would do our damn best to deal with the pain. We played a lot of Mario Kart. I had never realized how cathartic video games could be. Everything happens so quickly, giving you zero opportunity to think about your problems. Fixed.

She and he worked together so she was still in his life. Every day. At this point I couldn't even ask him to leave his job because I didn't know if we would be together next week. Which made it impossible for me to move on.

I could still tell that he was a million miles away from me though. That things had changed. That his heart did not belong exclusively to me anymore.

Next up: We keep trying but it just doesn’t work.

#nerdsunite

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