7/30/2000

How did things end up the way they did? Well, it was a combination of several things, really.

First, I had plenty of clues as to what was coming, but I chose to ignore them. I think that it was a subconscious reaction, to help keep me from having to deal with the idea of having my life disrupted. I didn't want to move all my stuff, I didn't want to end up staying with my family, and I didn't want to be alone. Add to that the persistent idea that I owed Janet something for her participation in my life during my difficult college years, and the result was my unwillingness to end our relationship.
I didn't realize how bad it was, as Janet was very good at hiding her feelings. When pressure forced her to complain, she managed to present some unrelated (and largely inconsequential) issue as the real problem. To this day, I'm not sure whether she did it out of incompetence, or if it was intentional.
The point here was that I closed my eyes to what was really going on, and perhaps that is my biggest regret.

Second, Janet changed over the past few years. To sum it up tersely, she became noticeably more selfish. Things we had been doing for months, or even years, were cancelled or limited because they were "inconvenient". My attempts to be equal in things became more futile, and Janet became more and more argumentative.
I suspect that the cause of this was a failure to get anything she really wanted, sustained over several years. She was never permitted to earn a Ph.D., and as a result, she was never able to place herself in a situation where she could earn an acceptable wage by teaching as a career. She was unable to get her own place, as opposed to living with her family. She also was never in a position to have children, something that she's wanted for a while. These last two, at least in part, were my fault. I demanded that she put off the idea of getting married until I was ready. By the time I felt that I was in the situation that I wanted to be in, I started having doubts about our relationship, which I suppressed (as I mentioned above). But, the feelings I had showed themselves enough to persuade me to put off the idea of marriage.

Things started going downhill around January of 1999. Janet became inexplicably sensitive and irritable, even more so than usual. While we were away in Florida with a large group of my friends, she expressed to me that she felt things were going badly. I tried to get a sense of what was really bothering her, but she couldn't articulate it very well.
Once we got back, Janet spent a few days thinking about what she wanted to, and she ended up driving down to Maryland to visit some relatives of hers, and to think about what was really bothering her.

Now, this is where things really started getting ugly. When Janet got back from her trip, she explained to me a few points that I would need to correct in my behavior in order to keep the relationship going. I don't exactly remember what they were at this point, and the details of those points are pretty unimportant. What they served to do was to convince me that things could get better, and that making our relationship work was a simple matter of tuning myself to be more considerate to certain things.

What *really* happened during that trip, which Janet revealed to me in a subsequent conversation, was that she had decided that our relationship was a lost cause. But, she didn't want to be alone. That, to her, was worse than having a significant other that she really didn't want. So, she made the decision that she had to find a replacement for me before dumping me. That's where my friend Peter came in.

For years, the three of us would hang out together, and everything seemed OK. There were times when the two of them would do things together without me, but I trusted the both of them implicitly - a mistake that I regret I will have to take steps to avoid in the future. Janet and Peter started getting into more things together that they knew that I wouldn't like, such as fencing. I didn't really mind this, as I was able to get a little more time alone, which I wanted. During all this time that they spent together, Janet slowly worked on breaking down whatever inhibitions Peter had toward being attracted to her on a romantic level. It took 10 months for Janet to execute her plan, but when she finally was sure that he wouldn't say, "no," she made it official by asking me to move out.

I originally took the whole thing very well, because I had my own reasons for wanting to leave the relationship. At that time, I didn't know what the two of them were up to. They waited about a month, before Peter told me that he would be dating Janet. At that point, I was absolutely livid, largely because I knew that whatever was between them then had gotten started long before my relationship with her was over. I then spoke with the both of them separately, and accumulated what facts I could. At the time, I wanted to salvage my friendship with Peter. But, that would require him to give up Janet, and he was absolutely not willing to do that.
Peter admitted that he had feelings for Janet, which he hid, that dated back to January 1999.
Janet admitted that she gave up on her relationship with me in January 1999.
Other things that they said add color to the important details. While I don't believe that they cheated on me in a physical sense (not that it would have made things truly worse), they were "dating" during those months.

The net result is that, with as many second chances as I gave Peter, I had to cut them both off. They really tried to make me the "bad guy", and that was very upsetting. But, everybody knew the story. Most of the people who were mutual friends of Peter and myself stopped talking to Peter, and those few who didn't agree that I was right, they just didn't feel right about "choosing sides."

It's been 8-9 months now since the events that turned my life upside down started taking place. And, while I feel that I'm personally better off after all is said and done, there are still many lingering doubts about how I could have prevented myself from being impacted so hard, on an emotional level. And, there is still a lot of pain.
Janet will tell people that I'm the villain, and deny all of the things that she said to me. Peter will plead ignorance, and claim that he doesn't recall any of the things that he said. They always say that there are three sides to every story, so it may be academically interesting to compare notes with them. I don't know.

The thing that I currently feel the worst about is that the people around me feel the pressure of choosing between them and me. I've tried to make as much of a "clean break" as I can, but there are limits. And, for most people, I have tried to be as open and accommodating as I can. That's really all I can do. I hope that one day, the pain subsides to a point where I can "just forget about it," but it seems to hurt more over time, not less.

I hope that this piece sums up, in an easy to understand fashion, the things that people missed by not being close to the situation. At this point, I've committed myself to being open about this whole topic, and I will always be willing to answer questions.

- Brian