I didn’t truly understand dating until much later than most people assume. For a long time, I believed dating meant exclusivity by default. If we were together, we were together. That was the consensus I was raised with, shaped by faith, family, and a worldview where commitment meant covenant.
But my relationship with Isaac from 2012-2013 unraveled that assumption in slow, unexpected ways.
We met only campaign trail because I was working with his father. He was a bit younger and more experienced and yet I was older and more inexperienced. When we were together, we were everywhere, restaurants, events, late-night adventures that only broke people with big imaginations know how to create. Our calendar was always full, our connection always alive. I became a pageant coach to his daughter, played the role of step mom, strategist, cheerleader.We built memories and building our own little world. One where I was a bit delusional and didn't see beyond the surface
We were definitely not building the same story.
What I understood as exclusivity, Isaac understood as open exploration. He tried to reveal that to me, not in blunt statements, but in subtle cues, patterns, schedule keeping, the way our time was structured instead of spontaneous. I didn’t have the language for it then. I didn’t grasp of the idea that two people can share the same experience but interpret the meaning differently.
And because I didn’t understand it, I ignored it.
The truth didn’t hit me until the day a proposal happened, a proposal I wasn’t part of. For a moment, I felt gutted. Confused. Like someone had pulled the floor from beneath a story I thought I understood.
It took time to move through that sadness. And even more time to recognize the bigger truth: we were never meant for the same destination. I loved the journey, yes. I loved the small thing that made that season one of the most vivid chapters of my adulthood. But love isn’t sustained by nostalgia. It needs alignment.
And the moment I finally accepted that we weren’t walking the same path was the moment the relationship began to dissolve. I let it be known that I was aware of what Isaac was doing, and how it hurt me. From there I just began to say no... My withdrawal wasn’t sudden. It was the natural result of seeing something clearly for the first time.
Resentment came in a brief wave. Disappointment came in another. But healing isn’t always dramatic, it’s sometimes just the quiet acknowledgment that you learned something you didn’t know before.
What surprised me most is that after the breakup, friendship managed to survive. Not by force, but just by mutual acknowledgment. The mature kind, where recognition replaces expectation. I’ve met his wife. We don’t talk often, but when we see each other, there’s no bitterness. Just history, respect, and a soft understanding that some connections don’t need to be held on to tightly to remain intact.
Isaac taught me something no one else had managed to:
that two people can love the time they shared but still not be right for each other’s future.
And sometimes, that realization is the real beginning of adulthood.
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