This post was submitted by up and coming St. Louis writer and TNG reader, Patrick McNearney.

Like many TNG readers, I find relationships oftentimes beyond complex. I can go from being totally thrilled with the person next to me to completely angry in less time than it takes for Sarah Palin to see Russia. Relationships are a risk. The benefit of relationships, however, seems to always far exceed the costs and that’s why it’s a risk worth taking.

This past January my boyfriend of a year broke up with me. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so lost. What hurts about losing a boyfriend is oftentimes you lose not one person but several — your lover, your best friend, your dancing buddy, your movie buddy, your cuddle buddy, and so on. As much as I wanted to hang on, I knew the best thing for me to do in the long-run was to let go. We had been very off and on again for almost two months and the emotional rollercoaster was certainly taking its toll. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get Jekyll or Hyde when I came home at night. It seems we fought about everything from how many kernels of corn he ate to how many pillows I was allowed to sleep on. While I knew as soon as we met that we were right for each other — that I’d found the yin to my yang — it seemed we could not get out of our downward spiral. Baz Luhrman gave some poignant advice when he declared, “Don’t be reckless with other peoples’ hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.” Some of the best advice I’ve taken.

I went two months without texting or calling or having any contact whatsoever. It seems to me that wouldn’t have qualified as a break (up) and I would only be cheating him and myself. So I trudged along and found new positive things to occupy my time. I took my first yoga class. I started to eat healthy again. I met up with old friends for lunch. Even though I still felt incomplete during the whole time I knew that — just as when you accidentally cut yourself — the best healer is time.

Weeks after I was in my fresh routine, I got a text from him wanting to talk. Letting curiosity carry me, we met the next day for coffee. I can boil our hour-long conversation down into two things 1) his life sucked 2) he missed me. But, again, I wasn’t about to let myself jump into the downhill slope again. While I had begun my climb into a new positive direction, he hadn’t done, well, anything to turn himself around. I wasn’t impressed.

Weeks after this, I ran into him again at the store. He told me about his new internship he snagged on the coast. He told me how work had calmed down and he finally had free time to relax and party. He told me he finally came out to his mom. He told me life was good. And he told me he missed me.

Fast-forwarding through a week of sincere long talks, 3-page letters, and reflection, we have now been back together for a month. I could not be happier. While I wish I didn’t have to go through what I did, the bright side is we’re back together and healthier than ever. While it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, it’s much more than that. It was tearing ourselves totally apart that made us grow back stronger than before.

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