It has officially been over a month now so I feel ready to write about this, after 7 years and 8 months, Lauren and I have broken up. I know people who are married who have known their spouse for significantly less time than we were together. So this is somewhere on the spectrum between a breakup and a divorce. We have gone through most of our formative years as a pair, gone through a lot of life experiences which will forever be tied up with us. Graduating college, graduate school, our first jobs, moving more than 10 times, traveling in Europe and the US, etc. I don't really know what this post is going to be as I am writing this, I am not really sure what I want it to be. I just want to get my thoughts down sometime close to the moment but far enough away to have some limited perspective.

The short story is that I am emotionally disconnected and therefore not providing enough of a "connection" as what is desired. This is something her and I have discussed in the past, even to the point of discussing whether our relationship was viable in the long term, but had also moved past it. This time she said that after thinking about it for a while that she thinks the best thing for both of us is to just be friends. I agreed with that sentiment. I think that if something is missing which makes her unhappy or that she is going to continually be looking for, then I don't want to be a part of that unsatisfying relationship. Personally, I thought everything was basically fine, but that is part of the problem I guess.

I don't really have much more to say about this that I want to write down. I guess there will be more things that come up over time, but for now it's over and who knows where we'll go from here.

On a separate note, we have moved to separate places, I am living in San Francisco again which has been an interesting experience. I think that is going to be the biggest source of adjustment for me as time goes on. We split up and stayed living together for a few weeks which made it seem like nothing was different. Now that I am living on my own again, it will take same time, but things are starting to actually seem more real.