Breaking up with Liza

Liza and I ended our formal relationship nearly a month ago. We’re still lovers, in the sense that we still naturally have love for each other in our hearts. That’s one thing we both realized from the Ceremony: we both can still remember and access the parts of us that loved our exes once upon a time. And why shouldn’t we honor that? So long as it does not detract from our present lives, why should it be a negative thing for there to be more love in the world rather than less? I suppose one answer to that may be that higher levels of love often come with higher levels of jealousy, and then you’re getting into utilitarianism and trying to compare how many units of love is worth one unit of jealousy. But Liza and I aren’t particularly jealous individuals, so the common stigma around exes doesn’t really resonate with us.

We may still be lovers in a certain sense, but we are no longer boyfriend-girlfriend. In the very beginning of the breakup, there were no practical differences to be found for this distinction. She told me she felt like we were naturally headed towards diverging paths for reasons unbeknownst to her, to a point where we were no longer going to be boyfriend-girlfriend. Those words had felt abstract when she first told them to me in the most loving tone possible. I’d taken the “girlfriend” label seriously in the beginning of our relationship, when I would proudly use it as a shorthand to communicate with others that they should also take us seriously. Now after close to three years of a formal relationship, I’ve grown much more secure and was willing to perhaps try experimenting with our own labels. So maybe she’s unable to explore these inner feelings of divergence right now, but we’ll naturally cross that bridge when we get to it. Except, that bridge was reached in a matter of days.

For context, we’ve been renting two separate homes in Siem Reap because that way, we could each have our own space during the day while reconnecting again every night. We could afford this arrangement because rent is only $200 a month per person, and we’re not deriving our income from working a local job getting paid under $300 a month as a college graduate. (Compare that to my time in Seattle, when rent was $1,900 for a single bedroom Wallingford apartment back in 2018 or so.) In any case, Liza wanted a night alone, which was unusual but certainly not something I minded at all. That turned into two nights and then three nights alone, without meaningful time spent together during the day either. I realized I didn’t actually want this. I’d romanticized the situation when I was discussing it romantically with Liza, but now I realized that labels aside, I didn’t actually want us to drift apart.

Did she just trick me into giving up the “boyfriend” label so that she could have an excuse to stop caring about me altogether? But I hadn’t agreed to that yet — I thought that was something we were going to discuss further when we reached that point! Flashbacks of my previous breakup came to mind, how a phase change in our communication had immediately manifested itself as soon as we’d agreed we were going to end the romantic part of the relationship. Ah, but that was not the case here. I think I’m much better at introspection and communication now than I was before, and Liza likewise is much better at communicating with me than my previous ex was. I could have the “boyfriend” label if I wanted it — it’s not like Liza particularly cared about it either — but the process of divergence was underway, and soon the label would no longer reflect underlying reality very well.

I see. I started talking to some close friends to help me process this divergence. Why did Liza want this? If she wants to explore a certain path in life, why can’t I just be a supportive background boyfriend while she does so? Even Liza couldn’t answer that question, but my friends could: there’s a certain level of dedication that’s implicitly required simply by virtue of being in a relationship. Even if the relationship isn’t the top thing on your mind, just the fact that it exists in the background means that you have to do things like regularly acknowledge your lover’s existence every now and then. That can still be mentally taxing if what you want is to go completely immerse yourself in the exploration of some other corner of the universe.

That explanation satisfied me when I heard it, but what was even more important was Liza’s reminder that digging into her psyche is not going to give me the emotional resolution I want. There’s always going to be a deeper reason Why: Why does she feel the need to dive completely into this path she’s on? What specifically about that causes her to feel this way? So on and so forth. These may be interesting and even useful questions for her to find out the answers to, but if I am not already at peace with myself and her, further answers are simply going to engender further questions. First find peace and acceptance within yourself, and then help your lover dig, if she so chooses to.

So I did. I let the label float away, and it was liberating to see that we could still love each other freely outside of a defined structure. I slowly increased the number of friends that I told about this development, just naturally dropping it in the next time I talked with each of them. They offered their condolences, and I thanked them — but I realized that I was feeling sad simply because of the constant onslaught of everyone expecting me to feel sad. I didn’t need to feel sad about this. I could feel however I naturally felt about it. So Liza and I weren’t sleeping together every night anymore, but we were still letting our love flow freely between us on a regular basis. Life was good.

We continued to drift apart. She had told me in the beginning of this breakup process that I was looking for some solid ground, but she can’t give me what I’m looking for because she’s water. I realized that was true.

I recalled how I initially stumbled on moral relativism myself. I no longer believed in Christianity and it’s Objective Moral Truth, but I still implicitly believed that there must be some Objective Moral Truth out there, even if I didn’t know what it was because it no longer came inside of a neat and tidy Holy Bible. I tried to do on a personal level what Hilbert tried to do for mathematics: create some sort of solid moral foundation upon which I could build all higher-level moral truths on. But as I hammered a pole deep, deep into the ground, I suddenly realized that I was building on a tiny asteroid floating through space, and at some point every further attempt to drive the pole deeper into the ground is simply going to spin the asteroid around faster instead of making the foundation any more secure.

I realized now I was doing something similar with love. I was drowning, but I found land. I crawled onto the ground and laid there, which gave me a great sense of safety and security. I tried to stand up, expecting the solid ground to support my weight, but instead the whole thing flips over and I get to find out that I was actually laying on a plank that was resting on nothing more than an ocean of water. But I’ve learned to float now. I don’t need the plank to feel safe anymore. I would greatly appreciate having Liza in my life, but I don’t actually need her for my life to be okay. I saw that this breakup was necessary for my personal growth, that I would not have encountered this realization at this point in my life without the catalyst of the breakup.

This was not personal growth that I would’ve chosen for myself. Even now, losing a great relationship in exchange for personal growth doesn’t sound like a great trade to me. And so, I realized there was no space for me to have any say in where this relationship went. Liza’s first instinct upon the first sign of trouble was always to say, maybe this isn’t going to work out. She may not have intended to send an ultimatum — she was just honestly evaluating her own avoidant feelings about a given situation — but each time something like that occurs, it is effectively an ultimatum all the same. And when such a “take it or leave it” ultimatum is in effect, there is no space for the other person’s preferences to be included, except insofar as they prefer “take it” to “leave it.”

There are various mathematical ways to describe the amount of power a voting member has in a scenario where votes have disproportionate power (think US elections where each state has a different number of electoral votes to cast for president). You could measure voting power by the probability that the vote affects the outcome, or you could measure voting power instead by the number of sequences where that vote ends up being the pivotal one that changes the outcome. If you always vote a certain way, then you actually don’t hold that much power, because your vote never actually becomes the pivotal one that affects the outcome. (This is one potential argument for why it may have been rational for a pro-Palestinian to vote against the Democrats this last election despite the Republicans being far worse for Palestine, because if the Democrats always have your vote then they actually don’t need to listen to you at all. I disagree with the argument because I think insurrectionist Trump trumped every other argument, but I think it was a sound one to make.) I never voted against the relationship, so I never demonstrated any real power in where the relationship goes. Just like with work-life balance, if you get a relationship at all, then you get the relationship that you’re willing to put up with.

This doesn’t mean that voting “no” on the relationship would’ve been the right choice for my past self. Liza would’ve said “no” too, because she was being true to herself and me about her feelings. If we were going to be entering any kind of relationship at all, it was going to be one that we knew from the outset might not last. I would be reminded of this through her occasional worries that she might have to leave me one day and that it’ll hurt me (paraphrased, because I don’t remember her exact words, only the sentiment), and I in turn would reassure her that it was okay, that I didn’t see why future potentialities had to affect our love in the moment.

As for me, I had said “yes” because I was also being true to myself and her about my feelings. Years of dating in Seattle had shown me how hard love was to come by for me, and a long-term girlfriend always felt like a distant abstraction that I could only ever wonder about from afar. How do people just start dating and then fall in love with each other? How can two lovers transition from initial infatuation to disagreements and arguments? I got the first question answered by my previous ex, and the second one (and many more) answered by Liza. I see now that disagreements are an ordinary part of figuring out how two different personalities can comfortably merge their lives together, how discussions can naturally get emotionally charged when they involve someone you’re emotionally deep with, and how none of this implies a lack of love. I see now that a lack of disagreement is in fact not at all a great barometer for how well the relationship is going; it can be a useful indicator in some ways, but it is only one of many such indicators. Most importantly, love no longer feels like something strange and out of reach, but something that I too have been welcome to experience and observe firsthand.

I honestly feel more whole now having known what it feels like to have a steady girlfriend. For me personally, it truly is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I feel vindicated in confirming that I was in fact previously missing out on a major human experience; people who deny that are probably not people who ever had to experience unending crushing loneliness. I feel vindicated in having suspected all along that having a partner as wonderful as Liza would make life so much better than being single. I feel vindcated in ignoring online advice about how the only reason otherwise decent guys can’t get girls must be because they’re misogynists; if Liza, who has ranted to me countless times about “men bad,” doesn’t think I’m a misogynist, then I feel pretty good about not being a misogynist.

I feel vindicated in giving up on real-life advice to go out of my way to do this and do that, because girls like this and girls like that. “Buff up,” they said. I’m reasonably fit, but I naturally have a slim frame. With consistent strong effort, I can thicken up enough for it to be slightly noticeable, but I’ll slim right back down once I relax my routine a bit. “Spread your legs out like a man when you sit” (aka manspreading), they said. Maybe this too is because I’m skinny, because it’s usually just more comfortable for me to sit cross-legged. “Dress well and pay attention to the latest fashion trends,” they said. I can follow simple explicit rules like “Don’t mix black with brown” if I really tried, but I hate having to think about what I wear, and I can’t do things I hate on a daily basis for very long unless I’m being paid a lot for it. These were all advice I’ve received from both men and women, and these were all things I’ve tried for some time with no discernable effects — A/B testing that produces a 50% increase from zero dates per month was still going to be zero.

Nor do Liza and I think that any of this dating advice would’ve attracted Liza any harder when I did finally meet her; in fact, she thought the fashion advice I got was horrid. Maybe all of the above is good advice for attracting some women, but even then, motivation to get a partner is different from motivation to keep a partner. It feels artificial and unsustainable to go out of my way to do something just to attract someone when I know I can’t keep not being myself for decades. (I know, I know, “Just be yourself.” Well, if me being myself was attractive to a lot of women, I wouldn’t be needing such advice in the first place, would I?) I’d felt that way before too, but now I know for sure that my failure to get a girlfriend wasn’t simply due to not doing enough of the advice that others gave me. Now that I too know something rather than nothing, I shalln’t be gaslit by well-intentioned friends anymore.

Liza went on a solo road trip to Kep, Kampot, and the last I spoke to her, Phnom Penh. We were doing video calls every night, then we sent each other loving texts every night, then we started messaging each other more and more sporadically until we’ve stopped messaging each other at all the last week unless something comes up — just the way we usually are with our distant friends. The process of gradual divergence has gone pretty smoothly, and I’ve been doing surprisingly fine, all things considered. The contrast between this and my previous breakup really drills home for me the importance of romantic aftercare at the end of a relationship. I think part of what makes this aftercare so good is that we have permission to keep each other’s love in our hearts, as opposed to the pop culture conception of a breakup where you had better get a move on and, if necessary, violently rip the other person out of your heart even if that sends chunks of your own flesh flying off in the process.

It has been hard at times, of course. There were times when I felt ashamed that I still needed Liza, like I wasn’t moving on as well as I should’ve been. The shame went away once I realized that’s what it was. I needed Liza, but she wasn’t there for me, and I was still okay. I don’t need Liza to be okay. There were times when I felt a bit mad at Liza even though I couldn’t figure out what I even wanted her to apologize for, until I realized that I was simply feeling hurt and that I could give myself space to feel hurt without needing to blame anyone for the hurt. There were times when I felt sad, but the sadness was like the bitter richness of dark chocolate. It was a healing kind of sad, not the sadness of despair but the sadness of growing up and realizing that you couldn’t have stayed a kid forever. There were times when I felt lonely, but I now know what it feels like to be deeply loved by someone, and I can return to those moments when I felt that love. I now know what it feels like to deeply love someone, and if I can deeply love them, I can deeply love myself. I can take the love I feel for her — which I know to be the purest, highest-quality love that Amos can conjure up — and bestow it upon myself, to love and be loved, because I now have access to both sides of the equation. Liza completed me, and now I complete myself.

Liza called me on the day of our third anniversary together to tell me that she loved me. It was sweet, but characteristic of her recent pattern of hot and cold: so hot that for a moment it feels like we’re right back in it, and then the cold of complete radio silence afterwards. Gosh, what is she feeling, what does she want? I must know so that I know what to do in response! But as a friend advised, “Don’t project your own needs onto her.” What are my needs, and what am I going to do about them? You know what, I don’t need this amount of uncertainty in my life right now. Instead of blaming the unpleasant feeling of uncertainty on Liza and her actions and her unknown intentions, I can choose to reduce the uncertainty I feel anytime I want. I’m going to manage my emotions in this way and respond to Liza in that way when she calls. I can always change that protocol as needed, but for now this plan provides the requisite amount of certainty I want for myself regardless of Liza.

I wouldn’t get into this sort of relationship again because I now value stability in my life more than I do experiencing a real romantic relationship, but the reverse was true three years ago and therefore my decision-making was different as well. I am now the kind of person who can say no to a relationship with Liza because I have been the kind of person who could only say yes to a relationship with her. I have no regrets, and I will forever be grateful we had the time together that we did, even if we will never again be the other person’s primary lover.

I get why there’s sometimes a need for the “rip them out of your heart” or “block your ex” breakups. Sometimes, an ex doesn’t respect your wishes and instead abuses all remaining avenues of communication to try their darndest to get you back. But maybe it doesn’t always need to be that way, and I feel like “Maybe it doesn’t always need to be that way” has been our relationship in general, as weird as that may have continually seemed to the normies. (Watching the movie Closer with a friend recently also similarly expanded my conception of relationships — love often comes with honesty, but maybe it doesn’t always need to be that way.) Our relationship started well, continued well, and it has now ended well. Must we view it, as is common in Cambodia and America, as a “failed” relationship that “wasted” three years of our lives? Just because something was meant to be doesn’t mean it was meant to be forever.

Early on, I think in the first week or two after we met, Liza told me about the movie 500 Days of Summer. I watched it then, and I watched it again this last week. I know I like meta, but sometimes life feels a little too on the nose about it. How did I just live through a real-life version of that movie, but better, and with explicit forewarning and everything? That’s so meta. But of course, there’s always a rational explanation. It was a decently popular movie about a decently common phenomenon, so it’s no wonder that Liza watched it. It resonated with her, so of course she’d tell me about it, and of course it is unsurprising that a girl that feels like Summer’s narrative arc makes a lot of sense would end up behaving in some ways similar to Summer.

It makes complete sense, and yet it still feels like a winking synchronicity from the spirits that be, much like how the last full-time job I had was a fully remote and time zone-agnostic one that finally gave me the financial courage to leave the US and travel around the world until I met Liza, at which point I was promptly fired from the job so that I could properly spend all my time and attention getting to know Liza in those crucial early stages of our relationship. The job had fulfilled its purpose in moving the plot forward, so it was time for it to leave the scene. Or, much like how Liza herself (along with a whole group of friends that I have only met because I stayed in Cambodia because of Liza) helped me undergo a personal growth spurt that feels bigger than all the personal growth I went through in Seattle, until I was finally ready to go to the Ceremony and publish a piece marking the solidification of my personal identity, at which point she promptly started breaking up with me. Perhaps that “Secret Passage Theory” guy was onto something after all! (But in all seriousness, even if such synchronicities are real rather than mere statistically probable phenomenon, I don’t know about making any life decisions based on them. Don’t break the fourth wall!)

When we first met, Liza held up a tangerine she took from her fridge and told me, “This is Gary. Gary is important to the plot. He will appear again in a later scene.” She said that right before she peeled Gary and ate him. Well, true to her words, the spirit of Gary has reappeared in this essay. I’ll say the same is true of Liza as well: She’s still important to the plot and will reappear in some subsequent scenes, but for now at least she is completely out of the picture of my personal life.