Listen to Diane tell you how it happened
Towards the end of our twenty-plus-year relationship, I knew it was over because of a sandwich. We were working together that whole weekend on a project that was due on Monday. At some point, that Sunday morning, he went out saying he was gonna…he really needed to put gas in his car. And when he came back, I was in the office writing and I heard like a bag opening and some other noise, so I went out and I found my Ex sitting at the island in our kitchen and he had bought himself a sandwich and a soda and some chips and he was sitting there, you know, opening the sandwich and putting it on the paper.
And I watched him sitting there eating his sandwich, and I was hungry.
I mean, we’d both been home working diligently on this project. And so I said, “Did you go get yourself a sandwich?” And he said, “Yeah, I decided I was hungry.” I said, “Well, what about me?”
And he just glanced down at his sandwich, took a bite of his sandwich. I was like, “So we’ve been together over twenty years. And you’re out, and you’re hungry, and I live with you. I work with you, and I’m your spouse, and you didn’t think of getting me a sandwich? Like, it didn’t even enter your mind?” And he mumbled something and just kept eating as I just went to the refrigerator and tried to find something I could gobble down for lunch and um, I had to let it go. I let it go, and we were working and we finished what we needed to do but something had obviously changed. Hugely changed.
Why would he not think that maybe I would want a sandwich too?
And I had a really hard time getting rid of this thought. Because it really was the beginning of the end, and I know that now. But at the time, I had to bring it back up. And so I did. I said, “You know, if I had gone out for gas and decided I was starving, I would’ve instantly bought two sandwiches, two chips, and two sodas and just brought it home. Or perhaps I would have texted you, ‘What kind of sandwich would you want? I’m going to the deli. We both need to eat lunch.”
Because that’s what you do when you’re part of a couple, you would not just go and buy a sandwich for yourself and then sit and eat it in front of the other person.
Maybe you’d buy it and sit in your car and eat it and just never let them know that you had a sandwich. Maybe you’d do that. But to actually bring it home and lay it out and…how about offering me half the sandwich and going, “Oh my God, what was I thinking? I don’t know where my head was at. Of course, here, have half of my sandwich, what is wrong with me?”
That type of thing.
But that’s not what happened.
And so, that is how I began to realize that it was just another sign of the beginning of the end of this very long.
What used to be called a relationship, and that I really needed to start putting things in place in my head for how this was really going to go. How this undoing was going to take place. How it was going to affect me? And how ugly it might get and all the rest.
I think if you are reading this, you have had a version of the same “sandwich incident” yourself.
Try to think back. What was that one small thing that made you start to realize that the love was gone, and he no longer thought of you when he thought of his own needs? He only thought of himself.
We all go through major life transitions when relationships end… Through the Leftat50.com website, I will share my thoughts as I walk the path of “New-Self” discovery. It doesn’t matter which side of 50 you are on. The real question is, ‘Are you ready to live life? To forge a Path of Your Own Making (For a change!)?’ Then stop dwelling over the What-Might-Have-Beens and join me. Share your thoughts here, comment on mine, and let’s do this together! And check out my book, “Restarting Your Life When You Are. No Longer A Wife,” I wrote it just for you!