The condensed (but still long) version of a much longer story.

I don't even know where to start. This will probably take a few posts to get out in any real way, but the short story is this: I'm a Christian. I believe in commitment and sex only in marriage. But in the last year and half, I had sex, fell in love, and had an abortion. In that order, and all involving the same man. It's pretty damning when you put it all into one sentence. But in the moment, even now, it never seemed quite so terrible.

He's not a Christian. Rather, he's a good friend that I've known for years and one of the most giving will-go-out-of-his-way-for-you people I know. From the beginning we took our relationship seriously, and it didn't take us long to decide that things wouldn't work and so we tried to stay away from each other. But in spite of our resolutions, it never worked.

We get along incredibly well and the day to day has always been really good, so on a practical level it overcame rationality. And we're both more driven intellectually than emotionally, which is what made this surprising. All of our friends, people who know us well, think we're a great couple and can't understand why we've had such reservations about being together and are always trying to not be dating. The person with the dealbreaker reservations has shifted throughout our relationship. Sometimes I didn't want to commit. Sometimes he didn't. Initially it was because he wanted kids and I didn't. Don't. And he's not a Christian, even though we often have interesting discussions on spiritual topics.

After half a year we ended up having sex. It wasn't intentional on either side. It's strange that somehow the line got so blurry, blurry enough that the day he thought we crossed the line is different than the day I thought we did. There's about a month's difference in our estimations. I agonized over that for a while, but it's hard to stay away from something when you've already gone there (though I wouldn't repeat this situation with another man. Honestly, there's a part of me that kind of wonders if Christians hold sex to too high of a standard. But that's another set of musings for another day).

Long story short, in spite of our best intentions we've had a hard time staying away from each other, even when we realized that we should because this couldn't go anywhere. It's partially physical, partially emotional, partially just because we get along as friends so well. We weren't very careful about birth control, and in August I realized I was pregnant. At that point we discussed all sorts of options and decided to get an abortion (I was only at six weeks gestation, if I'd done it any later I wouldn't have been able to rationalize the choice). It sounds almost glib as I write it, but neither of us could really eat or sleep for a week and I was terrified. So was he.

Oddly enough, that situation brought us closer in a lot of ways, though I think it revealed a heartless side of my personality. I've always been pro-life (what good Christian isn't) but there I was, making a choice because not only was the timing terrible, but I don't want kids. Ever. And the biggest problem: I couldn't admit to the world around me that I was sleeping with someone I wasn't married to. But I feel a little heartless because in spite of everything I don't regret doing it. I do feel like a hypocrite though, because none of my friends, even my roommates (and there are three of them), realize that I'm not a virgin anymore. Much less the rest.

You'd think that after that whole situation, faced with the reality that push come to shove we couldn't just get married on the spot even though we really care about each other, we'd be able to break up for real. But again it didn't work. I love him, and I realized that a few months before the whole pregnancy situation. Even now I'd marry him if he truly wanted to do it. In the end what changed appreciably was that we became really careful about birth control anytime we ended up having sex (which again, wasn't usually entirely intentional).

But here's the thing: he doesn't love me. The abortion made him realize that even though he's been saying for his entire life that he wants a family and kids, when he had a chance for all of that at once he freaked out instead. Maybe he doesn't want that after all. Maybe it was just the situation at hand. Which leaves him not knowing what he wants. The end of that is that as far as I can tell, whatever he wants it isn't me.

It's confusing though. He does things like bring me soup when I'm sick, unexpectedly give me money for my car insurance when I was stressing about not having enough money to pay the bill. He takes care of me, and it's only one of the many reasons that he is a great guy. (To be frank: one of my friends, not knowing even the entire story, said that he's "simultaneously a great guy and an ass"). In essence, his actions tell me that he loves me with the (significant) exception of the whole thing in August. But he doesn't think he does. And if he's confused on the point, he must not.

It's taken too long to get to this point, but right now we're not talking to each other so he has space to figure himself out on this and other issues. We're not dating. I'm not holding my breath. I want to say that we've finally broken up for real. In fact, ideally someone else would come along and sweep me off my feet so it'd be easier to move on. But even though this time apart is a good thing, he needs to do this and I know I can't have him anyway so I should really be consciously trying to move on (which I am, but it's not working very well), we haven't talked for two months and I miss him.

Even when one of us was out of town for weeks at a time or we'd tried to break up we still talked every couple of days and saw each other when we could. When we're both in town, we'd usually hang out every couple days even if it was just as friends and/or with other people. Right now in two months between the two of us we've sent four emails.

It hurts. I don't cry much, but I've been crying most nights for the last two months. It's not even the crying that's so horrible, but it's a physical pain that starts somewhere in my chest and travels out to my fingers. I see things that only he would find either interesting or amusing and have no one to share them with.

I know it will pass. I once faced the end of a relationship that nearly destroyed me, we'd invested so much into it. This at least we always said could never last. But right now I'm grieving for the loss of something that in many ways has been wonderful, if simultaneously unhealthy sometimes and frustrating other times.

This thing between us has gone on for almost two years, and its ending feels real this time (though when didn't it feel real). But we haven't spent this much time apart or not communicating since we started. I can't help wanting him, even though I try not to.