passage of time

I am 33, and I’m single again.

All my closest friends, with the exception of Miss M (who is heroically working on her diss), are happily married. Mrs. H (formerly Miss H) just had her first daughter, Baby S; Mrs. J is expecting her first child; and Mrs. C (not “that” C) is the mother of  her “nearly 2” son, Baby A. 

Until recently, I was in a long-term relationship with Orchestra Teacher. We met in Houston during my residency, moved to Austin for my fellowship, then moved again to Chicago for my first real job as an attending. We were together for over 3 years when one day, right after the holidays, he decided he was done. The kicker was we were living together and we were talking fairly seriously about getting engaged over the last several months.

It started with him saying, hey come here we need to talk. Basically, he decided he didn’t know if he ever wanted to get married and that he didn’t want to be have to account for someone else in his life. I told him flat out, sounds like you don’t want to be in a relationship. He confirmed that he wanted to be alone. He’d been thinking about this on/off for months, and didn’t bring up even a hint of what was going on in his mind until he couldn’t stand it any longer.