Another Door Opens

1 - What do you mean you're breaking up with him?

- EDEN -

"What do you mean you're breaking up with him?"

Her voice is doing that awful screechy thing it does whenever she's overcome with disbelief. Confusion. Indignation. Like the idea of me leaving my fiancé and partner of seven years is so unfathomable to her that it requires canine level octaves to really get the message across.

But I can hear just fine.

"Exactly that. I'm calling off the engagement and I'm breaking up with him," I replied simply to my younger sister Elodie. There really isn't much more to it. "I'm not happy."

"But of course you are, Eden. I don't think I've ever seen a couple better suited to each other than you and Trey."

It doesn't give me much faith in her outlook on relationships if this is what she thinks. Sure, Trey and I get along just fine and have a couple shared interests, but we have always been wildly different people in so many other ways.

He's extroverted, I'm not; or at least not by comparison. Put me in the right company and I'm as loud and outspoken as they come.

He loves living in the city; whereas I miss so much living by the ocean where I grew up, having moved away to be with him in Melbourne after we met and hit it off while he was on holiday back home in Byron Bay.

He still likes going out and partying with his friends; meanwhile I'd much rather be at home with a movie, or at a casual dinner and drinks with my best friends.

He has a fancy, well-paying job necessitating him to wear a suit every day, and I'm more than content cutting people's hair and trimming people's beards all day, not feeling his constant need to aspire to anything else or wanting for the extra cash because I live pretty simply, unlike Trey who has expensive tastes.

He likes to smoke cigars with his colleagues after work at the pub, and I find it repellent, as do I dislike the way he turns into a pompous douche whenever they're all drinking together.

He wants our wedding to be big and grand and expensive, but I really couldn't care less about all that, and would be just fine so long as my four best friends were beside me and my family was watching on.

I just want to be happy and content with my life, whereas he is always striving for more. More success, more promotions, more friends, more things.

He wants lots of kids, and I'm undecided that I even want any at all.

I really want a dog, he doesn't.

He drinks white wine, I prefer red.

These might seem like trivial things to some; but to me, they've been growing more apparent and divisive by the day, and are just the tip of the iceberg of all the things wrong about our relationship.

We typify the old adage that opposites attract, and despite our differences we hardly ever argue about everything. At first I thought it was romantic, and that we were 'meant to be' because we just never fought about anything, but now I'm not so sure. Sometimes disagreements can be healthy and productive in keeping a relationship functioning. I feel like because everything is easy and non-confrontational I grew complacent, and that some very big features of my personality and identity have been neglected as a result of our habitual togetherness.

"You only see one part of us, Elodie," I replied through the phone, wishing I hadn't answered her call when it came through. Her reaction is giving me more of a headache than my internal stress and misery over all this had already caused. "And you only see us together a couple times a year when I head home for birthdays and Christmas. He's different when you see him. He schmoozes you guys to like him."