Next Phase

She gave me the ring back today. I told her to keep it as a friendship ring. She told me that this was the third time we've tried, and she tried so hard it felt like it was breaking her. I feel...relieved. She's right. We are too different on many values to marry; when we look at what we want, we see different things. I feel sad, she's really neat and I want her in my life...but my life is big and complicated and she never really wanted to be in it anyway. I feel mad; she didn't make the effort to get to know my friends...but it's been a difficult set of years for her. Not too easy for me, in retrospect.

So now, like WingedCorset, I need to look at myself outside of a relationship and see how to improve.