Longest Breakup

From December until July. The seventh year of the 18-year relationship.

I called him about a week before Christmas. I left a message. He didn't call back. We were about to break up at Christmas yet another time. We already knew a bad season for us was approaching.

A couple days later I call again. He answers.  He hadn't returned my call because he doesn't have time for long conversations.

I'm like.... Wait a minute. We only talk one or two minutes. Long enough to set up the next rendezvous. You know I hate talking on the phone. 

He agreed. We hooked up the next day. But it wasn't like it used to be. We were distant. I still don't know the real reason he didn't call right back. 

We just went through the motions. Thus was born one of our relationship slogans. Our bad sex is better than most people's great sex.

But something was missing. So I didn't call him anymore. It took a lot of discipline. I wanted to call badly.

I didn't even try to do anything with the lingerie. The closet is a good place for it. I thought I would be overcome with emotion again. Which I was when I looked into that closet. I knew the relationship was not over.

But still I didn't call him. And he didn't call me. We didn't really break up. We just quit calling each other.

After six months I finally got laid at a sex party out of town in my tent among many spread across a field.

He slept with me all night. He was young & hairy. I fantasized about trimming his body hair. And how good he would feel until the next haircut.

It was a great night of drinking beer under the stars with a cub I just met. I was the older smooth top daddy using protection for sex. Then we cuddled all night. Sex again in the morning.

We exchanged phone numbers but never hooked up again. Too much physical distance. Age gap. And maturity gap. No burning connection.

I was hoping that would break the shadow of an old flame. I could start dating other people.

In July I went alone on a beach vacation for a few days.

While I was away, sewage had backed up onto the bathroom floor when the landlord flushed the upstairs apartment.

Five minutes after I return home, my boyfriend shows up at my door.  He wants to get back together. He had come to my house one week earlier but I wasn't home. Remember the phone is why we quit seeing each other.

But I had had sex. I waited six months for my boyfriend to call.

Still he wanted me to get tested at the clinic. I agreed to do it. Results would be all clear.

We started having sex then & there in my apartment.

I told him I had just masturbated a few hours earlier at the beach. And every day I was there. But I didn't get laid at the beach.

As we had makeup sex in my foul apartment I started talking like a chick. Don't we have something more than sex?

Then I snapped out of it. Sex is how we express intimacy and love. We're having a sexual affair. I was starting to talk like a girl. I said this to him in the moment.

After the sex we talked about the phone policy.

We only talk long enough to set up the next rendezvous. The next time I put my arms around you.

We never text message because it's too easy to misconstrue the emotion behind the text. Since we're in love, we're extra sensitive to what the other has to say. We have to hear how you say it.

If either of us loses the sense of urgency in returning a phone call to our lover, expect the same result. We will stop calling. We will stop seeing each other. 

But I will keep thinking about you. You will fantasize about wearing lingerie lying in my arms. We'll both wonder, what the hell is keeping us apart?

That was our longest breakup. We're still seeing each other eleven years later.