When Relationships Change | Andrea de Michaelis – Creating my own reality, one thought at a time

I was talking with friends, a long ago ex-boyfriend and his wife of a dozen years. She and I joked that when she was done with him, I get him back. He said “There’s not enough therapy in the world for that to happen.” Ah, memories… A friend wrote on Facebook: “The end of a marriage is no more a failure than the end of college is a failure.” I agree. I’m friends with all my exes. You just have to morph the relationship into a new shape is all.

I’ve been married five times. Yup, 5. And so you don’t think I’m a complete loser, three of them died; and no, it wasn’t the mushrooms 🙂 All my ex boyfriends and the husbands, we had pretty amiable breakups and remained friends. I learned early on that when my ex has a new mate, she’s not my competition, she’s my sister if I am to remain friends with him. I am not the other woman. I am not the ex-girlfriend. I am not his friend. I am the friend of both of them as a couple.

Just because people love each other doesn’t mean they have to live together or even be mates. Just because they live together doesn’t mean they have to get married. I think getting married simply involves the government in your finances. Just because they fight doesn’t mean they need to break up. We are so used to it having to be one extreme or the other. My life is not black and white. My life has many shades of grey and the areas often overlap.

I know people who are always in some drama with a friend or a mate and someone is always on the outs. Even me, 3 years ago someone I thought was a best friend simply cut me off and won’t tell me why. A year later she cut off 4-5 more of our group as well. Life’s too short for that. I try to morph and go with the flow.

So when my favorite spiritual brother and long ago ex-boyfriend Doug said there was not enough therapy in the world for he and I to get back together, I knew exactly how he meant it. He and I are the best as platonic buddies. In fact, when he and I split up, we looked for a piece of property that had two houses on it because we wanted to stay close. Something that could be easily bifurcated if one of us got a mate that didn’t like the communal idea. We didn’t find that, but the house down the street went on the market, so he bought it. It was an ideal arrangement.

He soon began dating a mutual friend, which was great because we were all part of the same gang and hung around together anyway. It made it easy to morph the relationship to fit the circumstances. I didn’t lose a mate, I gained a sister. I gained more than that because it was such a joy to see the two of them interact together. In fact, we are so close that I married the two of them on Christmas morning half a dozen years ago, with all our family and friends present. (Wow, my mom was right, she said I’d marry Doug 🙂

They are truly two peas in a pod and made for each other. And it’s a good role model for me for a healthy, happy, fun and playful relationship. I should be so lucky.