I moved to Fargo, N.D. from Illinois in 2015 to chase my dreams of being a radio personality. It was scary to start over and leave my home, my family and my friends.
After a month of living in Fargo I was making friends and going out, but wasn’t really dating just swiping on Tinder, but one September night outside of a bar that serves Boone’s Farm in downtown Fargo, my Uber canceled. Like magic a taxi pulled up and no one was around so my friend and I tried to climb in and that’s when we heard “Hey! That’s our cab!” as a group of guys start making their way to the taxi we were already in. We decided to share the ride and it turned out we had many mutual friends.
I started to hang out with this group of guys but one guys caught my attention and we started hanging out more on our own and the next thing you know we were dating. We dated for 4 ½ years, lived in 2 apartments together, got a house and shared a dog and cat. I truly believed opposites attract. He is quiet, I’m loud. He likes staying home, while I like to go out. I like to be the center of attention and he likes to be on the sides. It was like yin and yang but after years I was no longer happy.
Do opposites really attract? I felt we were too opposite, I wanted to go out and he wanted to stay in. I started going to more and more work events by myself. Hanging out with friends by myself. We didn’t spend time together. I would eat at the kitchen table he would eat in the living room. I was watching TV in our room while he was in the living room. I just felt like I was living with a roommate. We started fighting more and I was always in a bad mood which would cause more fighting. I was taking him for granted and neither of us deserved to be in a relationship like that.
Sometimes it’s harder to let go than to hold on. We were together for 4 ½ years and we had a bond, we were comfortable with each other. I thought maybe that’s what happens when you are in a relationship for a long time. I was holding on because I thought things would get better, but they didn’t.
One day I told myself this is the day I needed to do it. I was nervous, I wanted to cry and I felt like I was going to be sick. I was doing dishes and I blurted it out. I told him we needed to break up. He didn’t try to fight me on it or try to make it work, I think he knew it was time too. I then moved to the basement and was sleeping in our guest room. I thought I would only be down there a few days while I was apartment hunting, but then coronavirus made its way to Fargo. It was hard to find a place that would do an apartment showing. I ended up getting sick and I was out of work which stopped my apartment hunt and I was living in the basement of my ex-boyfriend’s house for longer than I planned.
It felt like my life had turned into a movie “Being Quarantined With My Ex.”
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