Spiderqueen, two things that just happened to touch my heart.
I have loved this man for most of my adult life, and the final cut feels like it will erase me; I am essentially abandoning a life-long fantasy, and I'm terrified I won't recognize myself without it.
There was a man like that in my life as well. In retrospect, I think part of why I held on to the fantasy of what I thought life with him ought to be like because it protected me from having to accept a REAL relationship. As long as I held him as a hope, I didn't have to take anything else seriously because he was always the REAL plan (in my mind) so any heartbreak or problem that happened in other relationships didn't matter, not really…
A good friend of mine is dying today. He's 42. I'm thinking "if I had died at 42 I would have died still tethered to an alcoholic and never really known how wonderful life could be."
None of us live forever. It's your choice how you want to live the rest of your days.