Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Ashley

The lovin is a mess, what hap­pened to all of the feel­ing?
I thought it was for real; babies, rings and fools kneel­ing
And words of pledg­ing trust and life­times stretch­ing for­ev­er
So what went wrong? It was a lie, it crum­bled apart
Ghost fig­ures of past, present, future haunt­ing the heart

—Belle & Sebastian, Another Sunny Day

Our rela­tion­ship has always rep­re­sent­ed the inno­cence of my youth.

The Friday nights, play­ing with can­dle wax in the dark, learn­ing how our bod­ies worked. Or the rush of wor­ry and excite­ment about par­ents walk­ing in the door. Olfactory sense has come to mean a great deal in my rela­tion­ships. From those nights we made love with Beth’s voice com­ing through your tin­ny speak­ers, I get turned on when I lis­ten to Portishead.

I kept the bot­tle of Gap Earth you used, some­thing dear to me since it was dis­con­tin­ued. Every time I smell the noz­zle, it brings me back to the time we were togeth­er.

Out of all my oth­er girl­friends, I thought you would be the one to end up in a D/s rela­tion­ship. I nev­er real­ized it until my own intro­duc­tion to the lifestyle, but the things you did were the most nat­u­ral­ly sub­mis­sive. The way you want­ed to be tied up with our belts, the enjoy­ment you got from pain, your desire for me to be in con­trol, the way you would take my hands is yours so you could kiss my knuck­les. To this day, I won­der if you still like these things.

I’ve always tried to fig­ure out why I’m nev­er sat­is­fied in my rela­tion­ships. It’s usu­al­ly not the fault of the peo­ple I date. Sometimes I blame my par­ents for their failed mar­riage, and how this has made me feel that’s it’s nec­es­sary to find the per­fect per­son so I don’t end up like them. Sometimes I think it’s because you were the first, and you came to define what was “right” or not.

Why then, did I break up with you?

I wish I could explain. I thought things would last, because you nev­er hurt me in any way. In fact, you did noth­ing wrong. Maybe we were just too young. They say you should­n’t mar­ry the per­son you can live with, you should mar­ry the per­son you can’t live with­out.

And I knew that I could live with­out you.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen

4 comments

  1. I am con­tem­plat­ing the fact that I might be a sub because of my nat­ur­al dom ten­den­cy. Does that make sense?

  2. I real­ly like your blog because it touch­es on some­thing I can realate to. Like you, I have spent most of my teenage life look­ing for the “per­fect” per­son who I can’t live with­out. However, I soon real­ized that no per­son has the abil­i­ty to hold my life and help me live it. I have the pow­er over this gift God has giv­en me. With that real­iza­tion and verac­i­ty accept­ed, I have opened my eyes to the per­son I know I would want to spend my life with. If that per­son would die before I do, I’d still go on liv­ing, know­ing that that’s what he’d want me to do.
    So, don’t go on look­ing for the “per­fect” per­son because you could nev­er find one. Instead, set­tle on the per­son who your heart beats for, who makes you smile and cry. Lastly, be con­tent­ed on the per­son whose name your hypo­thal­a­mus shouts.
    Good luck!

  3. @pita — That can make sense. A lot of doms at work are subs at home because they don’t want to be respon­si­ble all the time, and need a change. However, as far as I under­stand, one should­n’t define one­self but what one does, but by what one feels. I use to think the world was black and white, and cat­e­go­rize peo­ple as either sub or dom, but I now know many peo­ple who are nei­ther. You may be one of these if a strong sense isn’t pulling you in one direc­tion.

    @trex eden — I’ve real­ized that there’s no per­fect per­son for a while now, after meet­ing many cou­ples who are in die-hard love, yet still have their fights and their dif­fer­ences. If you’ve real­ized this as a teenag­er then you’re way ahead of me. What’s the fun in per­fect any­way?

    I don’t quite agree about “[set­tling] on the per­son who your heart beats for” though. I’m some­one who believes in mar­ry­ing the right per­son or not mar­ry­ing at all. Maybe you did­n’t meant to say “set­tle on”, which to me is mar­ry­ing the per­son you can live with, not the per­son you can’t live with­out.

    You bring up an inter­est­ing point about what hap­pens if one per­son dies before the oth­er. I’ve used to think of such things, in the old log­ic of the “per­fect mate”, and won­dered what I would do if the oth­er died first. Your com­mitt­ment to live makes a great deal of sense, and I like your idea of no one hav­ing the abil­i­ty to hold your life and help you live it.

  4. Absolutely worth wait­ing for the per­son you can’t live with­out. It’s your life, you only get one. Best of luck with the hunt ;)

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