So…when Joe and I were living in Syracuse we almost split up. I was working as a graduate assistant for the athletic department 20 hours per week, teaching full-time, bartending Wednesday through Saturday nights from happy hour to close and going to school full-time. Joe became engrossed in work and climbing the corporate ladder. Before long we were living two very different lives. Compounding the problem was the fact that I fell in love, quite innocently and quite by accident, with one of the athletes that I was advising. We never had a physical relationship. It wasn’t like that at all. But emotionally, I was completely, almost desperately, head over heels for him. I decided to leave Joe thinking, if I can have feelings this strong for someone else than I must not be in love with him anymore. The day I made this decision I called my sister and she told me that Joe had just bought me an engagement ring. I lay on the floor of my bathroom for hours crying, trying to decide what to do. Do I leave stability, history and a man with a future that loves me for the uncertain, unknown college student that I love?
The relationship (with the athlete) wasn’t one sided and he tried to convince me to leave Joe. The situation was amplified by the fact that both Joe and this other man were both lacrosse players at Syracuse (to this day it makes things really awkward). Obviously, I decided to go back to Joe and try to make it work. I quit my job at the athletic department. It helped that we moved to Albany too, because quite frankly, I didn’t fall out of love with this other person, I just decided to give Joe another chance and being around this other person made doing that too hard.
This other relationship wouldn’t have worked anyway, at the time I was 27 and he was 22; It was all very Mrs. Robinsonesque. Anyway, point of all of this skeleton-in-the-closeting is that I haven’t given this other man much thought since last summer (yes, I thought of him while I was getting ready to get married, so sue me). In fact, I had all but forgotten about it until last night when I had dream after dream about leaving Joe, reconnecting with him and living out the rest of my life with him. I kept waking up from the dream trying to force the idea out of my head, only to fall back asleep and have the same dream. I am thinking this is because I watched the games this past weekend and heard his name 1,000,000 times. I told Joe about it this morning. Maybe some things are better left unsaid but I couldn’t not tell him. I felt like I had emotionally cheated on him…again.
I know it was just a dream. It just caught me so off guard, I’m still so off guard.
