The love, the friendship, the life we built, and the one I thought would last forever.
Some relationships begin with attraction. Others begin with friendship. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find someone who becomes both your best friend and the person you choose to build your life around.
For me, that was Randy.
He was my best friend, my husband, and someone who understood me in ways I hadn’t experienced before. There was a comfort in having someone who knew me beyond the surface, someone I could share the ordinary parts of life with, and someone I thought would be beside me through whatever came next.
Our life together wasn’t built around extravagant gestures or a constant search for something exciting. So much of what made it special was simply having each other.
We played video games together. We went to festivals. We shared friendships, family, and experiences. We were best friends who happened to be married, and for a long time, that felt like everything I had ever wanted.
I remember looking around at the life we had built and genuinely believing I had made it.
I had a good career. We had bought a home together. We each had a car. We had family, friends, and a life filled with the things I thought made a person feel settled and secure.
I had a home. I had a husband. I had my best friend.
I thought my life was complete.
When things became harder to understand
What I didn’t understand at the time was how much I was struggling internally.
There were things happening in my brain that I didn’t have the language or understanding to explain. My invisible disabilities affected how I processed information, communicated, handled stress, organized my thoughts, and navigated difficult situations.
I could appear to be functioning while struggling with things other people couldn’t see.
Over time, those difficulties began affecting more than just my everyday responsibilities. They affected my ability to communicate what I was experiencing and, ultimately, our relationship.
I didn’t always have the words. Sometimes I couldn’t organize my thoughts quickly enough. Sometimes I needed time to process something before I could explain it. Sometimes I knew something was wrong but couldn’t articulate exactly what was happening inside me.
And when two people can no longer understand what the other is experiencing, even a relationship that once felt effortless can become incredibly difficult.
I don’t believe everything that happened between us can be reduced to one explanation. Relationships are complicated, and both people experience their own version of the same history.
But I do know that I was struggling with things I didn’t yet understand about myself.
I also carry hurt from how things unfolded, from the communication that broke down, the things that were left unresolved, and the feeling that my experiences and struggles were sometimes understood very differently from how I was actually living them.
It took time to begin understanding that some of what I had spent years struggling with wasn’t a failure of character, a lack of effort, or a lack of love.
There were real neurological and executive-function challenges underneath the surface that I didn’t yet know how to recognize or explain.
April 2023
We have been apart since April 2023, around Easter.
There is something particularly difficult about separating from someone who was also your best friend. You aren’t just losing a romantic relationship. You’re losing the person who was woven into your everyday life, your routines, your home, your memories, and your understanding of the future.
The person you once shared everything with becomes someone you have to learn to live without.
And sometimes the hardest part isn’t just accepting that the relationship has changed. It’s trying to make sense of everything that happened along the way.
There are things I wish had been understood differently. Conversations I wish we could have had. Things I wish I had known about myself sooner. And questions that may never have the answers I hoped for.
We’re technically still married, even though our lives have taken separate paths.
That unfinished chapter is part of our story, too.
What Randy taught me
Randy taught me what it felt like to be understood.
He showed me how meaningful it could be to have someone who was also your best friend. Someone to play games with, go to festivals with, laugh with, share a home with, and build an entire life alongside.
He also taught me something I didn’t expect to learn: sometimes loving someone and being able to make a life together aren’t the same thing.
People change. Circumstances change. Sometimes we discover things about ourselves that completely reshape how we understand our past.
I wish I had understood my own mind sooner. I wish I had been better equipped to communicate what was happening inside me. I wish some of the misunderstandings between us had been met with more understanding and less distance.
But I can’t go back and rewrite those years.
I can only acknowledge what they meant to me, what they gave me, what they cost me, and what I have learned since.
What I wish for us
Despite everything, I don’t want our story to be remembered only through the ending.
There was a time when we were best friends building a life together. There was happiness, companionship, music, festivals, video games, a home, and the simple comfort of knowing someone was there.
Those memories are real, even if the relationship didn’t last.
I don’t know what the future holds for either of us. I don’t know whether the unfinished parts of our story will ever find resolution.
But my hope for Randy is that he finds happiness, love, and a life that brings him peace.
And I hope those same things for myself.
I don’t need to pretend that everything was okay to recognize that someone was once incredibly important to me.
He was my best friend. He was my husband. He was someone I loved deeply.
And for a long time, I thought we had found our forever.
A home we built. A life we shared. A friendship that once felt unbreakable.
Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones that never really get said.