Love Letters: Jose

Goodbye, my love.

I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.

This post is part of Love Letters, an ongoing series about men I know, men I’ve loved, or men who changed me.

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Hey Jose,

Forgive me for writing this in so public a forum. But the fact is, I love you. I'm leaving you, and I love you.

I'm moving to San Francisco in a few days. You know that when I leave, our relationship will end. That's what we've decided to do, and it is probably the best course.

Now that I have graduated college and you are still a student, my life will move in unpredictable ways, and I do not know where it will go. I have to be free to follow it. You have to be free to follow your life too, too—to study, to find a job, to find more love and more special people, and to be the person you will become.

You know I have to go. I have to see what I can do. I have to try and make it in the world. There are no chances for me to work in this little town we live in, this place I found you in, and I will not be happy here if I stay. It's time.

For most of my college life, I talked pretty badly about relationships. In the very beginning of our dating life, you picked up on that. You asked me one day in the college food hall: “Do you really think so little of relationships?” In that moment, I wanted to take it all back, every little joke, everything I’d ever said. Because, in that moment and in every moment since, I wanted a relationship with you—I wanted it to work, wanted you to believe in it, and in me. I was wrong about relationships. It’s true that love and commitment scare me, but I think they scare everyone a little bit.

When we met, we knew we were a bad idea. The sex was great. The relationship was casual, easy. But sex led to sleepovers, then movie nights, then eating together. I met your friends, and one day—you remember the day, on the blanket, on the lawn, when I laid down beside you and kissed your hands—we knew we were something more than friends. And then I showed you this blog {Beastly’s Edit: Most of those early sex and dating posts have since been deleted.} . The next day over breakfast, you said, "You think relationships are nothing."

You were right—I did. I have presented those who value dating as childish and delusional—as children believing in a fairy tale. But I found the fairy tale. It’s real. It’s you. How stupid of me to think I would never find someone who fills my thoughts this way, who makes me feel loved in a way I have never felt loved before. You changed my mind—it's that simple.

You are not committed to any fantastical idea of love. You are realistic. You knew what we were doing, what the risks were, and you still said, "Let’s be boyfriends." We discussed limits and boundaries, our different desires and requirements—mine, as we learned, were harder to deal with—and we knew our chances of lasting long-term, after I graduated, were slim. But still, we did it.