This is the story about how I got half broken up with a year ago by my boyfriend of six and a half years but chose to stay with him because I’m:

1) a sap.
2) very loyal.
3) kind of pathetic?

For me, there’s never been any question of Kamran and me moving to California. I knew from almost the beginning of our relationship back in September of 2006 that he eventually planned to take his career closer to his family in Orange County. Yes, it’d mean leaving all of these friends I feel so lucky to have made, but I’m really, really charming and knew I could make more. Yes, it’d mean leaving the job that I love, but I knew I could find another to suit me. Yes, it’d mean being even farther from my family in Ohio, but I was willing to work hard to see them as often as I do now. Yes, it’d mean leaving NYC long before I felt “finished” with it, but I could justify that, too. I would have to drive (dreadful), but I could sing at the top of my lungs in the car again. I’d have to live in a house (scary), but maybe I could have a pool. I couldn’t eat at Michelin-starred restaurants every weekend (DEATH), but I could finally cook at home in a place with more than just the stovetop and half-fridge in Kamran’s studio.

I pictured us living near Laguna Beach, where he grew up, and being close enough to walk to the water every day. I pictured loving my hair and skin every day the way I have in summers past when we’ve visited his parents and there’s been no humidity. I pictured not having to use air-conditioning and living in linen pants and finally being relaxed in a way I haven’t since moving here almost eight years ago.

But one night last spring, Kamran and I were walking to our favourite sandwich shop, and he told me that he was going to renew the lease on his apartment even though he was sure he wouldn’t be here another full year. I asked, “Oh, is it going to be that soon? And were you going to mention it to me?” He said, “Oh, did you want to move with me?” And I was like, ” . . .”

Because why wouldn’t I want to move with him? We fell in love almost accidentally–I had seen his picture before our date and didn’t think he was right for me but decided I should at least try to be friends with him and then swooned the moment we actually met, and he said at first that he wanted to keep dating other girls but changed his mind as soon as I went on a date with someone else–but I thought that if there was such a thing as fate, we would be the proof to that theorem. We just got along SO WELL. We liked the same kind of music and movies, dancing around his apartment, walking around the city for hours, and cuddling to the point that people would vomit if they knew even an inkling of how much time we spent wrapped up together in his Murphy bed. He introduced me to fine dining and made me try a world of food I either didn’t know existed or thought I didn’t like. We liked different TV (me, reality shows; him, adult cartoons), but we compromised so much that he eventually found himself loving “Survivor”, and I eventually found myself watching “South Park” even without him. We found the same things funny and remarked over and over again about how no one else would ever laugh at them. I thought–and I’m sure every really in love person thinks this, so don’t be offended–that no couple in the world was as perfectly-matched as we were. We were brainy. We were cute. We were creative. We were driven to do different but complimentary things: he was the focused one who worked hard and made all of our weekend fun possible; I was the easy-going one who made friends he got along with just as well as I did. Neither of us liked to eat the ends of pickles. Neither of us understood people who cut in line at the bus stop. Neither of us had ever known what love was until we met.

When people asked why we didn’t get married or insinuated that our relationship was somehow less important than theirs because rings weren’t involved, I didn’t have to be hurt by it, because I thought we were above all of that. I didn’t have to try to coerce him into marriage, because I wasn’t insecure. I thought ours was the purest kind of love, because it wasn’t forced. It had nothing to do with children, finances, or housing. We paid for separate apartments but spent all of our time together by choice. We basically lived in a 250-square-foot studio for six years straight and never got tired of each other.

Here are the reasons Kamran names for breaking up with me:

• He never intended when he met me to have found his final girlfriend.

• He wants to be a bronzed glamourboy and doesn’t think he can be fit and chiseled in the context of our food-dependent relationship.

• He’s not ready for the commitment that comes with moving in together, and I insisted that if I follow him across the country, we should finally officially live together.

• He thinks it’s normal for couples to break up in the midst of a relationship for no reason other than to date other people. He thinks, but is not sure that, his sister and her husband did that and then got back together and got married, and that seems normal and correct to him.

• He wants to meet new people who can introduce him to new ideas. He actually told me years ago that he expected for us to eventually get bored of each other and break up in order to be exposed to different people, and I somehow just thought he was being coy.

He says those are the only reasons. He says he doesn’t expect to find anyone better-suited to him and that he has no complaints about me. Part of me really, truly believes that he loves me and thinks that our relationship was as special as I do, which is the thing that’s keeping me from being mad at him. Not that I haven’t been mad at him. In the last year, knowing that he could pick up and leave at any time, I’ve thought about how I sat at home with him weekend after weekend for years while he studied for law school instead of going to friends’ parties and concerts and happy hours. I could’ve had those six and a half years with a boyfriend who came home from work at 6 instead of 9 and had time to take me to dinner not just on the weekends. I could’ve been with someone who liked vacations and had time to visit my family with me. I could’ve been with someone who went to Hamptons or the Jersey shore just once with my friends and me. I could’ve been with someone who put me ahead of his job just once without my asking.

I’ve also been sad about this. It’s hard thinking that I might’ve spent some of the best years of my life with someone who didn’t feel the same way for me that I did for him. I grew up in a town where none of the boys were like me and waited 25 years to finally find someone worth loving, and then I did, and it was even better than I thought it’d be, so even though some of my friends encouraged me to break up with Kamran before he could break up with me during this last year of waiting and wondering, I held on and decided to enjoy it as much as I could. It didn’t feel stupid or self-disrespecting because he made it feel too special. We had an AWESOME last year together.

Yes, it sucked when he accepted a new job in California last summer and had to keep deferring it to spend more time here. Yes, it sucked being on edge for twelve months, never knowing exactly how much or how little time we had together. It sucked not being able to blog about my feelings because it felt embarrassing to announce that we were breaking up one day and then continue to write about all of our sappy adventures as a super-in-love couple the next. It sucked feeling like I should definitely, definitely be crying all of the time but not letting myself because it felt like wasting time when time was precious. It sucked that I was so exhausted by my emotions during the whole debacle that I was almost relieved when he left just because at least I finally knew. I never wanted my first love to end not with a bang but a whimper, you know?

But we also did it all this past year. We took walks to the waterfront park on Beekman nearly every weekend, stopped caring about how small his apartment was and invited people over, rode the Roosevelt Island tram so many times, chewed each other’s arms to the nubs, tried the Doritos Locos Tacos, admired the Chrysler Building from his window, butter-basted our first steaks at home, played in the snow, ate so many Michelin stars, karaoked, introduced friends to Um Segredo and the Momofukus and Tocqueville and so many others, held hands on the subway, learned about wine and cheese and by that I mean ate a lot of it, chose the loser of every reality show within the first ten seconds of the episode, woke up at 5:45 a.m. to go to the gym, played the game where he would tuck me in at night and I would kick the covers off so he’d have to do it again, and created an Excel spreadsheet detailing our plans for every day of his last month here so we could be sure to live it to the fullest. And we did. And I’ll never forget it.