THCreate

This is the story of my personal relationship with the woman I have called my own and now no longer have the luxury of calling mine. Life teaches karmic lessons for reasons.

Our History

Since November 2009, I have been in an off-and-on relationship with a woman named Devin. Devin was my high school sweetheart and the girl I took to prom. She was the girl I would walk to class, the girl I protected, the girl I showed the world to as if she was gold. She was the same girl who had a troubled past and all I wanted to do was be the one good thing she had going.

Fast forward to 2014, Devin and I shared our first son, Levi. Two years later, our daughter Trinity was born. We enjoyed nothing more than being parents and the new experiences we would be facing together.

In 2018 I proposed. By June 2019, the engagement was off due to what Devin described as a lack of trust and an internal feeling of ‘not being ready.’

Trying to make it work for our children, we resided in the same home until 2020, in which, after a long ride, came to an end.

Elementary Love In The 90’s

We had the potential to create an amazing story to tell. Curious why? Devin and I went to the same elementary school in 1999. I never knew she had a crush on me. I didn’t remember her, but she never forgot me.

I also never knew Devin and her family moved to Texas, until we reconnected via Myspace in 2009, when she excitedly told me she was moving back to Kentucky. I gazed at her profile picture on Myspace, eager to meet her and eager to see this girl who had crushed on me for so long.

Not Ready For A Relationship

Early in our relationship, I was never ready to settle down. Devin was always ready but always the first to realize we should have taken a step back to learn about each other before rushing into a relationship. Like other teen relationships, we argued, we got mad, we held grudges, we exchanged words, sometimes hurtful and more often out of spite than actually meant. I get it. Who wants to be with anyone like that?

I’d always tell her and every other woman, ‘I don’t like relationships’ or ‘relationships aren’t for me’. That could have been an excuse but the feeling of being tied down didn’t settle well with me. We parted ways in 2012, but reconnected in 2013 when we rented our first home together. Little did we know, we were expecting our son Levi in 2014.

Parenting

Levi was born in 2014 and opened our eyes to the world of first-time parenting. It was amazing seeing this woman perform the natural roles of motherhood: breastfeeding, waking up at night to change the baby, pumping at work, the lack of energy to pump and falling asleep at night. That takes tremendous effort to not feel defeated. Combine that with being a working parent diagnosed with postpartum hypothyroid, and you have yourself an exhausted human.

Trinity was born in 2016 and truly changed our hearts. Born with a cardiac rhabdoymoma and TSC, all we wanted was the health of our child to outlast that of our own. Once again, I would witness Devin in her motherly role breastfeeding, expressing ounce after ounce to feed our child. It’s as if history repeated itself so quickly, that I was lucky to embrace these natural occurrences and experience them together as one family.

The Problems

A major problem our relationship lacked was true love. We lacked mutual trust, a foreseeable future, the desire for the other. Though we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend at any recognizable point in our relationship, we built up the image that we were, by coexisting and co-parenting, which has greatly impacted our relationship to imitate something realer than it was.

Devin felt I wasn’t supportive enough or communicating to her standards. Additionally, she claims she wants to be alone to clear her thoughts, something she’s wanted since our relationship took a turn for the worst in 2018 when I told her I was interested in someone else…so was she.

Discovering she was interested in someone else hurt me more than all the times I hurt her emotionally because of my failure to be present in our relationship. Since 2018, I vowed to change my flirtatious ways and make her the true focus of my life. She is the mother of my children and the thought of separation is gut-wrenching when I know these problems can be worked out.

What’s more gut-wrenching is since 2018, I thought we were in an understanding of where we were headed with our futures, our hopes, our lives. This is where the karmic understanding comes to play. Unfortunately to Devin, I changed nothing in two years.

I felt aside from the occasional bickering about who left what dish in the sink would be a simple task to work out. Living with anyone presents a challenge on its own. I admit I am more obsessed about enforcing a clean living environment, but cleaning up after two children is enough for the average working adult with a full plate.

I tried to change the things Devin suggested would strengthen the relationship. Hopeful, I communicated more, listened to her problems and took the advice of my brother, who quoted the bible saying “be slow to speak, quick to listen.”

Unfortunately, she feels I haven’t changed that. It’s more so a slap in the face, because what have I been doing these past two years to not persuade her to change her mind?

In return, I asked Devin if she would work on things to strengthen the relationship for me. Hopeful, I asked her to dedicate more time to us, more time to our family of four and to be affectionate the way a man would hope a woman would be.

The bottom line is, you cannot change anything about a person who does not want to change. I personally feel I’ve made tremendous changes for the better, changing what she did not like, what I would call sacrifice. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to change the problems I thought would repair us, but I was wrong, and in the end, I feel I wasted my time.

Working The Problems Out

There’s no doubt that Devin is the one person who has been through Hell and back with me. We’ve done everything together under the sun including attending out-of-state family celebrations. We are so similar, we used to call ourselves “Twin” because we always thought of the same thing doing everything alike.

At the end of the day, the years of emotional pain and suffering Devin felt attached to me is no longer. We decided to go our separate ways and be amicable throughout this difficult process. Devin felt that the years she experienced with me caused too much emotional trauma and stress, that she felt smothered, as if she couldn’t breathe. I never doubted that we had problems, but who doesn’t in a relationship? I had such high hopes about moving forward with our lives, that her signs of uncertainty were unrecognizable.

Through it all, I was hoping that we would be able to mend and repair our differences with each other. Devin disliked what she considers lack of communication, excess emotional trauma and felt I was too controlling early in the relationship. I disliked not feeling loved and consistently feeling unappreciated. We didn’t speak the others love language. This all takes us to where we are today…during the 2020 Pandemic…separated.

Working Out The Kinks With Children

Practicing amicability is an important step in ensuring we have a healthy parental relationship for both of our kids since we are separating. We agreed on a schedule that would be fair so we can both see our children without the involvement of the court system.

Tried To Change But Changed Too Late

Since 2018, I worked hard at making Devin the focus of my life after letting her down by not showing her she was the queen of my life. Our verbal exchanges were toxic, but we knew if we could weather the storm, it would be an amazing story to tell of a couple making it work after a decade-long attempt. After all, we were one of the longest relationships anyone in Louisville endured.

I’l never forget the nights she spent crying alone, the days she felt out of place to our small family and never did she feel there was resolve. I can’t change the ways of my past, only learn from them. I am human and neither one of us have been perfect in the relationship.

To this day, we forgive each other for the emotional damages suffered. We love each other–I love her–but she isn’t in love with me. It’s unfortunate that the inability to move forward is something she cannot come to terms with. Her mind is set on a new outlook on life. One without me in it, other than communication in between child exchange.

This isn’t what I wanted and I never thought I would be the statistic I was growing up–raising children from two different homes, where mommy and daddy are not joint.

The Next Step

To live with a person for nearly seven years and leave their side is an awry feeling. I have been the provider, the protector and more for Devin, even before the birth of our first child in 2014.

I didn’t walk away from Devin or my children. I started the process of moving my belongings from our apartment home, created a schedule for our children and walked away from a woman who saw no compromise in us.

This will be a life adjustment and by all means was not easy to handle. After devising a realistic plan for the future of my kids and I, life has a better outlook without the person who I have known the past eleven years. Maybe this is for the best.

It is my hopes she takes this time to focus on what it is she wants from life. All I want is to be included in her life plans as a couple who can work side-by-side through anything. The first step to that is recognizing our relationship and laying down our expectations and how we can overcome, should this occur again.

I have to be fair to myself and realize it is now over. I hope she receives the clarity she has been seeking. She now has the unlimited free time to think without clouded judgment. Though I can’t wait around forever, I hope she knows I am still willing to repair and fix the problems she has as a man who wants nothing more than to reunite his family.

The next step is to take a deep breath, breathe, accept what was and what is.

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