“… and as I’ve been thinking about us, I realized how silly I’ve been. I’ve always been so jealous whenever I see you even talking to another woman and really you’ve never given me any reason to worry about the strength of our relationship. I have no reason to be so insecure about us.”

Those were the words that Julie said to me, just seconds before I pulled the pin from a grenade.

The correct response would have been, “You’re exactly right! There is nothing in the world that I want more than to spend the rest of my life with you. In fact, I will cease all unnecessary communication with other age-appropriate, single females as a gesture of my commitment to you.”

The incorrect response would have been, “Julie, my dear, your insecurities have been completely justified.”

Instead, I responded, “That’s interesting.”

In my ingenuity, I had discovered a second incorrect response. Her demeanor immediately shifted from one of pride and contentment to one of utter panic. My words could most generously be described as neutral, but the look on my face was apparently quite devastating. As if there was something that I was trying to figure out how to say. As if something about this utterly benign revelation gave me consternation rather than comfort. My words were restrained, but my expression conveyed everything I wasn’t saying. The incorrect response.

When I have to do something that I don’t want to do but feel that I should, I have a rather methodical approach. Most simply, I remove the possibility of any alternative. I burn every bridge but the one that I need to cross. Put another way, I box myself in, brick by brick. At least, that’s what I try to do.

For the eight months or so prior to that moment, I had been slowly laying the groundwork for that moment. I did so because for the three months prior to that, I had been laying the groundwork for a different moment. The moment where I say “I do.” As I laid down each brick, I could feel a part of me go from determined to sad to numb. Then something funny happened. I would go to bed and when I woke up, the bricks that I had started to put into place had disappeared. During the day I would lay the brick on, then at night it would come off.

While I was consciously trying to put myself in a place where I would have to propose and have to marry her because that was the right thing to do, I was subconsciously sabotaging my efforts. I was spending the engagement ring money recklessly. I was putting myself in situations where if Julie found out she would be mad. I was leaving things just ambiguous enough that if she did get mad, I could get indignant and we could have an argument.

Ahhhh… an argument… the first step towards a break-up. We never argued. It was maddening.

The tide had shifted six months or so before the moment that I pulled the pin. First I became conscious of what I was doing. Second, I stopped lying to myself about why I was doing it. Third, I was actively aiding my former sleepwalking self. I stumbled across a book about how couples break up. I was already in Chapter Three. As I read further, it was like I was reading my own future. Not because it provided me a roadmap, but because I would already tell that was what was going to happen. It was surreal.

Finally, about a month before the pulling of the pin, I met Evangeline. Whatever doubts I’d had were immediately destroyed. It wasn’t my intention to jump from one relationship to another. On the contrary, I was initially quite reticent about anything resembling another relationship. But when I met her, I remembered what being in love felt like. I couldn’t, however, remember the last time I’d felt that about Julie.

Oddly enough, I was unwilling to take the most obvious route out of my relationship with Julie: infidelity. I’d already been unfaithful with a girl named Cecilia, but that was before I realized what was happening. It was unplanned. It was the watershed moment that I began to realize exactly what was happening. It was an act of desperation. Upon the revelation of what was going on, I was no longer desperate. I couldn’t do that again. And so with Evangeline, I didn’t (and I paid dearly for it).

In the aftermath of the daliance with Cecilia, I confessed to her that I was in an unhappy relationship. It was the first time I had uttered those words to anybody. Evangeline in turn was the first person that I told that I was going to leave Julie. A week later I told my best friend Clint. A couple days after that I told my brother Mitch, then Ollie. With each person I told, I’d sealed our fate that much more. Brick, brick, brick.

Then the moment came. I wasn’t expecting it at all. Julie hadn’t even told me that she was evaluating our relationship or her own jealousy issues. It came at the tail end of a conversation about Green Arrow. “Oh, by the way, I’ve been thinking a lot about us.” Me too, as it turned out.

I wasn’t ready to tell her. Left to my own devices, I don’t know if I’d ever be ready. On the other hand, I’d been waiting for her to notice. I wasn’t mistreating her or being cruel. I just figured that at some point she would notice that I wasn’t in love anymore. Maybe she did and maybe that’s why she was thinking so much about us. Maybe she just happened to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, forcing my hand before I was ready, if I was ever going to be.

“That’s interesting.”

She asked me to wait two weeks before making any decisions. She asked a couple mutual friends to talk me out of it. She and I saw each other nightly where we talked about it and I started telling her all of the things that I’d been holding in. First Kaye failed to convince me not to leave her, then Tony failed to convince me. Then, after about a week, she’d finally heard enough. I remember that night when I visited her. She’d taken down all my pictures from the wall. I was a little bit hurt, but mostly relieved.

We held off announcing our split until after the holidays, though her brother’s girlfriend (who always seemed to be competing with me in her quest to be the favored future in-law) “accidentally” let it slip. That lead to the most awkward family Christmas Party that I’d ever been to. The day after that we made it official. A week after that Evangeline broke my heart. A week after that Julie and Tony were an item. Nearly five years after that Tony went through almost the exact same process that I had gone through.