Last week, I went to a great Indian place I’d never visited before and thought about telling Mark we should go there sometime for lunch. Then I realized there wasn’t much point since we won’t really be going to lunch anymore after next week. That was kind of a melodramatic moment. Now that he’s posted about the specifics, I figure I owe some of my longtime readers and friends a little explanation as to what’s going on here. I’ll make it quick and snappy:

• Yes, Mark and I will no longer be living together after the first of the year. He will be moving back to San Francisco. I will be staying put in the Triad. Unlike before, there is no specific timeline for when we might be living together in the future.
• No, we are not calling it quits, no matter how much it may sound like it. I love my boy very much (and I know it’s mutual) but we’re adjusting to the fact that our relationship will look rather different in the future than it has for the past nine years–in many ways.
• Yes, I want Mark to be happy. He’s not happy now, which is making us both unhappy. So we’re giving this bi-coastal thing another shot in the absence of other mutually acceptable options. Hopefully, this option will work. I realize that doing nothing will definitely not work.
• No, I will probably not be discussing this further in this space (1) because this part of my life is personal and not for public consumption, (2) because I want to avoid oversimplifications like this one, (3) because I want to avoid any temptation to communicate by website rather than “face to face”, and (4) because it’s just not what I want to be writing about here.

So that’s where we are. Please join me in wishing Mark well in San Francisco. And don’t worry too much about me either. I’m not in a very happy place right now (big understatement there), but I’ve proven over the years to be nothing if not resilient.  I’ve got a job I love and lots of new toys to occupy my mind until we have our first rendezvous in Minneapolis or Omaha or wherever. And I’m really trying to see the positives in all this, albeit with mixed success in certain Indian restaurants.