Welcome to Interviews With My Ex-Girlfriend in which Autostraddle writers get back in touch with their ex-girlfriends to ask them Five Simple Questions:

1. How long did we date?
2. Why did we break up?
3. What did you learn from our relationship?
4. What do you miss most about me?
5. Would you invite me to your wedding (why/why not)?

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I met Marni for the first time at a GO Magazine Party in New York City in April of 2010. We both had girlfriends. She’d been a longtime reader of my blog and website and wanted to meet me — but she wasn’t a complete stranger since she’d been internet friends with Laneia for a few months at that point. Then, because they all lived in Brookyln, she’d become real life friends with Taylor and Kip, who also worked for Autostraddle back then. Marni and I clicked right away and hung out a few times before she moved to Oakland in June. By the end of the year we both lived in California and were dating.

I’d first started talking to Marni about my idea for A-Camp that summer, before my move to California. She had lots of camp experience and was very into the concept. The dream became a reality in April 2012, with Marni and my friend Robin Roemer as co-directors. At that time Marni and I lived in the same building, but different apartments. We moved in together a few days before our second A-Camp in September. Because it wouldn’t be an interview with one of my exes if there wasn’t some kind of business involved, right? AM I RIGHT, LADIES?

So, last week I interviewed Marni on the phone while she made rum balls, whatever the fuck those are. The original interview was 15,000 words ’cause we talked for an hour and a half, but don’t worry, I cut it in half for you!

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Riese: Okay! How long did we date?

Marni: Three and a half years, give or take? I would say, wouldn’t you?

Riese: So November 2010 ’til —

Marni: Oh I would’ve said October!

Riese: I would’ve said October! But whenever I told people October, you always insisted it was November. “Not until Thanksgiving!”

Marni: Right, because that was a full month after I’d broken up with my previous ex, who I’d continued to live with after the break-up under horrible circumstances. It wasn’t ’til I moved out that we were free to fly.

Riese: Right, that’s when we were allowed to start officially dating.

Marni: I think it was around when Haviland and Ashley came up for Thanksgiving —

Riese: SEE!

Marni: Things started out murky because although I’d broken up with Cordelia* [not her real name] I was still trying to extricate myself from what had become our kind of scary not super-safe living situation. And things had already gotten kind of bad so —

Riese: Yes, because she took my favorite books out into the street and doused them with a watering can.

Marni: That’s the only thing that was doused with water, but other things happened that were equally or more horrifying. I may or may not have been doused with water, I don’t recall —

Riese: You were attacked with a knife!

Marni: It’s blocked out.

Riese: We told each other that we loved each other before we became official girlfriends.

Marni: Seems out of order.

Riese: Well, I mean, what is “order,” really?

Marni: Okay, so three and a half years?

Riese: Yeah, fall of 2010 to Summer of 2014.

Marni: Which I think is a significant chunk of time where we were in our lives, too, like from late 20s to early 30s for both of us.

Riese: Autostraddle was very young and poor and I worked constantly.

Marni: We met because of Autostraddle, I was one of the first commenters.

Riese: It was like, just you and a few other commenters and people who worked here. If we got 30 comments it was a busy day.

Marni: I’d started reading your blog, Autowin, through Gawker, and then read your L Word recaps so when you launched Autostraddle I commented like I’VE BEEN READING YOU FOREVER LALALALA I’VE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME! or something dumb. Then I moved to New York to be with Cordelia, we’d been long-distance, and was commenting all the time. Then we both moved from New York to Oakland for separate reasons around the same time. I moved in the summer, and and as soon as you got here in the fall it was ON.

Riese: We were talking constantly leading up to it, like G-chatting all day and spending 3-4 hours a day on the phone, all summer.

Marni: Yeah we’d be up til like 4 AM on the phone.

Riese: The worst is that sometimes I would take an Ambien and still be on the phone with you so… much of that is gone.

Marni: It’s gone for me anyway.

Riese: Yeah cause you don’t have a memory.

Marni: Yeah I’m a goldfish.

Riese: Then I got to Oakland and was sort of in denial that it was happening.

Marni: I had this whole mess I was in. You kinda precipitated the thing I had been working on which was ending this relationship I was in. You got to town and I was like “OK!”

Riese: Cordelia wouldn’t let you hang out with me one night, so it was like you had two options, one was “not hang out with me” and the other was “break up with your girlfriend.”

Marni: Well, sure, but it was bigger than just one night. I was like, okay, I’m officialy gonna put an end to the abuse that I’ve been dealing with for years now. I went home, ended it, and called you. You showed up and I’ll never forget it — you were like, “I feel like all you needed to end this relationship was a ride.” And it’s true! It was true literally and it was also true figuratively. It was like all I needed was a ride to get out. For someone to come and pick me up and take me away. And that was all. It was as simple as that.

Riese: Yup.

Marni: And then it was over. I mean it wasn’t over because it continued for another month of horribleness because I didn’t have anywhere to go and I didn’t have money and I didn’t have a job and I had to sort that out all at once. And then I got out, and over time, we became US.

Riese: While you were still living with Cordelia, I’d come over to your apartment every day while she was at work and we’d work on Autostraddle and we smoked so much pot.

Marni: I smoked so much pot then.

Riese: I was NOT a day smoker, you know? I had no idea what was going on, I’m like, I’m in Oakland, I’m staying with Taylor and Kip, I don’t know where I’m gonna live, I’m broke, at least three of my friends are mad at me, I didn’t pack any bras, I’m not sure why I’m here, so I was like, yeah let’s roll another joint.

Marni: I was in the same boat. Why am I here, in the United States — ’cause I’m from Canada, for the record.

Riese: We spent a month editing that Judith Butler thing. It was like… smoking pot, drama, editing, Scrabble.

Marni: Yeah. Pot, drama and Scrabble. If that’s not my late twenties, I don’t know what is.

Riese: Yup, exactly, and I was staying on a couch.

Marni: So was I!

Riese: Yeah you were also on the couch.

Marni: In my own house.

Riese: It was intense to be crashing with friends through all that, but Taylor and Kip were so nice and supportive through all the drama. Then we were on the hill by where you had orchestra and I said I felt like we were aliens, and that’s when “pop-up pod” started.

Marni: We were just like a little pod of people and we would just pop up wherever and we could take it on the road and be a pop-up pod.

Riese: Where did the “pod” part come from?

Marni: I think the pod part came from we’re “two peas in a pod” and this is our pod that is now for some reason in Oakland, which makes no sense for anyone’s narrative.

Riese: Neither of us had any ties there — no family, no job, two friends.

Marni: Who had just come from New York and had no real reason to be there either.

Riese: Which became evident when they both eventually left! We tried to make other friends. You had other friends eventually. Maybe this should lead us into the next question.

Riese: Which is… “Why did we break up?”

Marni: I guess the short answer is that neither of us were happy. For different reasons.

Riese: Yeah.

Marni: My own reasons were apparent to me but your reasons weren’t as apparent to you.

Riese: It’s weird ’cause I consider myself very self-aware, but apparently not! I remember at camp in May 2013, talking to Julia, Laneia and Vanessa, about how I felt depressed and so lonely — I knew it had something to do with us, but I didn’t think “we should break up,” and I didn’t think you wanted that either. I thought “we should move to LA where we have friends” or “Marni should figure out her stuff and get happier and then bring that happiness home to me.”

Marni: It wasn’t misguided. I had plenty of other reasons why I wasn’t fully happy. But we’d lost that THING — whatever it was we had in the start. When we got together, you were starting Autostraddle and working on it constantly, I was trying to figure myself out, we were in this uncertain place together.

Riese: In the beginning, like the first year and a half, we communicated CONSTANTLY, which blows my mind now. We had apparently TONS to say to each other and then by the end we had nothing to say and didn’t seem to desire each other’s company too much? At one point going even like a few hours without talking to each other was torture. I think some of the change is that in the start of a relationship you have a different self, you’re paying close attention to each other’s needs, getting to know each other, trying out each other’s things to do. For a solid year and a half we were really good — and also really healthy? Pretty good for each other and to each other at first. Although we did drink a lot of bourbon. And then…

Marni: Later we got into a pattern. I had my 9-to-5 job, a certain amount of monotony in my own life, and I didn’t know how to change it. You had your ways. I’d come home and you’d work and I’d cook dinner. That’s when I got really into cooking!

Riese: Was when you were feeding me?

Marni: That was my THING. Like “I’m gonna go to the store and I’m gonna plan these intricate dinners” and then you’d be up working all night. I’d go to bed, you were still on your computer. We both had these worlds we were in, and our worlds stopped intersecting at a certain point. I mean other than A-Camp.

Riese: Which is a pretty big intersection.

Marni: I wonder how things would’ve worked out if we hadn’t built A-Camp together. “Working together” is an arena in which we have done very well. Plus it was a goal outside ourselves to focus on, so we weren’t looking directly at this thing in our immediate lives that was also not perfect.

Riese: Also we didn’t like to do the same things.

Marni: That’s true.

Riese: I just thought, “I’m an introvert, you’re an extrovert so you go out and do things and I stay home!” It’s important to have lives outside of each other! But I didn’t realize ’til my next relationship that no, like it’s definitely important to have separate lives but it’s also important to have at least like 2-3 things you both enjoy doing outside of the home, yannow?

Marni: Mhm. It was kind of a drag. That the things I was interested in doing were not the things you were interested in doing.

Riese: Right. Like sitting around and drinking beer in the afternoon.

Marni: Like social gatherings or going out — at the time I’d go out to gay parties like Hella Gay or Ships in the Night or go dancing and you weren’t into that. It was fine, like I wanted to go out and do it, and if you didn’t want to, then I was happier to go by myself.

Riese: You’d just come out of this super possessive controlling relationship where you weren’t supposed to do anything without Cordelia, so it was probably a relief when I came along and was like GO FORTH DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. But like — I like going out! I like going out dancing and drinking like… once a month. I didn’t like the BART though, that felt like too much. I also feel like you’re super into sitting on the lawn with your beer watching live music. Or we’d go to the used bookstore and you’d wait outside smoking. I didn’t want you WITH me, like following me around in the bookstore — that would drive me nuts. But I do prefer somebody who’s also interested in looking at books.

Marni: I did get to a point where I was answering questions like “Where’s Riese?” a lot and eventually those questions started making me sad. “Why isn’t she here?” Like I respected your reasons and it’s not like I thought you weren’t a good partner or a good person. What made me sad eventually was that I felt like we just weren’t quite matched up as well as I’d thought we were in the beginning. I would’ve liked for you to be there, but the way that you would’ve been there would’ve been if you were like, a different person. It wasn’t just like I needed your physical body there, I wanted you to want to be there. And I’m sure you felt that way about other things for me.

Riese: No, definitely. Also probably in the beginning — we were both going out. We did also still have Aja, M, Taylor and Kip there, which helped. We both really wanted to make new friends!

Riese: But then I was like EH! I couldn’t find my place in the Bay Area scene as well as I did in New York, or even just while visiting Los Angeles. Ultimately, I just didn’t click with the people you’d clicked with. But also… you’re very accepting of people and letting people be themselves, which is great for like 75% of people. But what I realized in my next relationship is I need someone who sometimes pushes me out of my comfort zone. Abby would be like, “I really want you to come to this thing with me, we’ll have fun!” and so I would go and we did have fun! Or, if we needed something at Whole Foods, you’d always run out alone so I didn’t have to put shoes and pants on, but she would just be like, “put your shoes on, you’re coming to Whole Foods with me” and we’d scamper across the street and those little things were important too. Although I suppose an invitation is also a kind of promise for an experience to hold a certain value.

Until fall of 2014, I had way too many responsibilities at Autostraddle for just one person. That situation got less severe after Heather started and we launched A+. But also — I think I was more willing to get up and go because of what I’d seen happen in my relationship with you. I’d always been resistant to the attached-at-the-hip-lesbian-couple model, I like a lot of space and consider “lots of space” an indicator of relationship health.  But through our breakup I was forced to consider the value in sharing more space, too, and I opened myself up to that type of partnership in a more deliberate way. And I realized that you actually can be a “team” and do a lot of things together without losing your independence or being attached at the hip. It’s tricky, like, do I really wanna be with someone who pushes me to do things that I’m not always sure I want to do? I guess I do!

Marni: Maybe if I’d just bullied you more?

Riese: No! That’s not what I’m saying at all. Part of what I really loved about you at the time was that you let me be me… even when me wasn’t really correct. I got really lazy with you. I think that sometimes I need someone else to make the decisions and boss me around, ’cause that’s what I do all day at work.

Marni: Interesting. I did eventually stop assuming… there did come a part where I assumed you wouldn’t wanna go to a thing, I stopped even bothering to ask you.

Riese: Right. And this was all new — I’d never moved to a new place where I had no friends. In all my prior relationships, I had heaps of my own friends, and like with Alex we had a huge network of mutual friends. It wasn’t like that in Oakland, I never made my own friends. I think the only times I did anything social without you were when people were visiting from out of town. And then it snowballed to where we weren’t doing ANYTHING together.

Marni: Yeah and we became more isolated from each other.

Riese: And I think by the time we broke up it was like… we hadn’t really hung out in a really long time.

Marni: Sometimes we’d make efforts like, “let’s go into the city and walk around the neighborhood!” But the things that we wanted to do in those neighborhoods didn’t match up. Like I wanted to eat and drink and you wanted to like go to museums. And I don’t hate museums, you know.

Riese: But you don’t LIKE museums.

Marni: It’s not my thing that like if I go to a place and am like, “Where’s the museum?”

Riese: Whereas my #1 thought is, WHERE IS THE MUSEUM?!! IS THERE AN ANTIQUE STORE ON THIS BLOCK?

Marni: Like when I took you to Hawaii on my work trip, I was like “let’s chill out at this beach with a drink and a book and just go in the water and tan all day,” and you were like, “I wanna go to the museum about how the United States fucked over the Hawaiian people!”

Riese: I did! It was a great museum. I like chilling out on the beach too, but in moderation. I think we have different energies in that way, like I’m more of an explorer and you’re more of a chiller-outer.

Marni: Everyone should go to that museum and read back on the post you wrote about Hawaii ’cause there’s some really important stuff in there.

Riese: Thank you for your support.

Marni: That’s also the post where you said that I’m up for anything that doesn’t involve olives or walking up a hill.

Riese: That’s true!

Marni: Which remains half-true.

Riese: And then we broke up and like three days later we both wanted to walk up the same hill with different people.

Marni: What?

Riese: I was like “I’m going hiking with Abby at Anthony Chabot Park today,” and you were like “I’m going hiking with Kyle at Anthony Chabot Park today” and I was like, “Well, one of us isn’t going to Anthony Chabot Park today.”

Marni: We have impeccable timing, the two of us.

Riese: But it was a weird moment because I was like, “why didn’t we do this with each other?” And it was also like “well, I guess this is why we broke up, because we didn’t.”

Marni: Yeah it was like, well if we both wanna go hiking, or we would go hiking, but we wouldn’t go with each other… then that speaks to why we broke up.

Riese: Yeah. Exactly.

Marni: Like after we broke up I was like, “She’s gonna start eating dark meat and all the other things that I could never cook, like full fat milk products, meat with bones —”

Riese: I didn’t!

Marni: That’s a thing that always hurts, the why not with me? Even though we broke up for all the reasons, when you see the person you were with doing things you never did together like; “You wouldn’t do that thing with me, but you’re doing it now… so maybe it wasn’t the thing. It was me.” Like when you can isolate the variable in that way?

Riese: Yup, exactly.

Riese: Next question: what did you learn from our relationship?

Marni: I think my biggest takeaway is probably the value of having an Amazon pre-scheduled delivery of paper towels?

Riese: I’m glad that resonated with you.

Marni: Which I have yet to set up, I haven’t figured out how to set it up myself.

Riese: This is why we broke up, ’cause you would’ve never set it up.

Marni: Maybe that’s where my current relationship is going ’cause I keep saying I’m gonna set it up. Okay. I did an undergrad degree in Women’s Studies in what’s the most progressive/radical women’s studies in colleges in Canada, Concordia, but I never went to grad school. So I had this sort of theory-head knowledge and women’s studies geekery floating around in my brain BUT I feel like three years with you was sort of like getting a master’s degree in Women’s Studies.

Riese: So you’re taking this really literally, like what INFORMATION did I obtain —

Marni: I learned a lot from you during our relationship! I still do, I still read the things you write and I respect you intellectually tremendously … I think that you’ve been one of the most influential people I’ve ever known in terms of how I think about the world. Then all these brilliant people you surround yourself with who I was exposed to because of you. And you’re CONSTANTLY trying to learn more, especially around things like, ways that Autostraddle was maybe fucking up in the beginning or finding blind spots and filling them in and you’re learning and accepting things you hadn’t quite been doing as well as you could, reading everything you could. I’d hear about it and I’d hear you playing out these intellectual conflicts and then with other people. It was so valuable.

What I learned FROM our relationship, as cheesy as it sounds, is that sometimes when you really love something, you have to let it go.

Riese: Mhm.

Marni: I think became very very true for me because I loved you very much — I still do — but it was just so obvious that this wasn’t working as a long term indefinite thing anymore. I kept putting it off ’cause I wasn’t sure. I didn’t wanna make the wrong choice and regret it. I did learn that the end doesn’t have to be the end of the world, though. As soon as we accepted that this was ending, we were able to move forward in a way that we hadn’t moved forward — either of us — in a long time, and that was really important. Like when I came in to have that conversation with you when I knew I was about to break up with you and I sat down —

Riese: And I was like “Can we talk?” because I was about to ask you if we could be poly!

Marni: Oh yeah, right! You had this whole other thing going on at the time inwardly that I didn’t know was happening.

Riese: And you sat down and I was like, “I feel like you are so far away.”

Marni: …and I said to you, “I feel like I’m torturing you.” It was sort of true. I knew we weren’t happy, and I knew you were hanging on and maybe still thought it could be a forever thing, even if it wasn’t perfect.

Riese: Also I think I was terrified of having to like, DATE.

Marni: Right, and so was I!

Riese: You kinda already had someone lined up. If we’re being honest.

Marni: I mean you kind of did too.

Riese: Yeah. Right… but I wasn’t really conscious of that at the time, that it would become what it became.

Marni: I felt like I’d been torturing you and also myself. Then when you get to the other side, the question is “what was I so afraid of?” When you get to the other end of that scary thing, things keep going. We’re still friends, we’re still working together, we’re probably in a much healthier place than we were —

Riese: Well, you are. I was! But I’m in a kind of angry place right now with my life.

Marni: Yeah. I guess it’s like… when you know what you have to do, you have to just do it and stop wasting the other person’s time. Because you’re wasting your own time too!

Riese: You know there’s that Stephen Dunn poem and the wife says Why did you leave me? and he says I was already gone. / I just brought my body with me. That’s how I felt about you those last six months! Like you’d already left.

Marni: Yeah, and that’s true. I wasn’t there anymore. I was there, but I wasn’t emotionally there —

Riese: You’d either go out for drinks after work, or go to the gym with your friends, or you’d come home, and you’d go outside, and you’d smoke and drink and be on your phone for hours.

Marni: And you were inside on your computer.

Riese: I was usually talking to Vanessa or Laneia. You weren’t my primary relationship anymore. We weren’t each other’s primary relationships anymore.

Marni: We were both seeking out friendships elsewhere and just going through the motions. Well also I do think that we cared very deeply for each other.

Riese: Yeah for sure.

Marni: It was more like we’re just not… we’d actually already transitioned into the mode that made more sense to us. It wasn’t romantic, but we still lived together.

Riese: Also a lot of it was age, I wanted to have kids one day. Marriage wasn’t on the table for us and hadn’t gotten any closer to the table for the past two years. The clock was ticking! And it seemed like breaking up with you and starting all over with someone else would make that impossible, so I just said to myself like, “Maybe this is what a long term relationship is? You stop hanging out, eventually?” I didn’t know what anything was SUPPOSED to look like. Not from my own parents or really anybody’s parents.

Marni: When you wrote that thing about leaving California and moving back to Michigan, planning your trip, and you said something like, “I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like, and now I do.” Like “now I’m in a different relationship and can see the ways I am happy that I wasn’t before and I didn’t even realize.”

Riese: Yes, that’s true. That is how I felt.

Marni: As scary as breaking up is… you can’t know what’s on the other side, all you know is that moment and if you know it’s not right you can’t waste everybody’s time. You don’t have unlimited time! I knew you wanted to start a family. We weren’t in our twenties anymore with all the time in the world. You needed to have the information to make a decision for yourself, and I was withholding information from you about my level of happiness and commitment while I tried to figure out my own thing and that’s not fair, to have somebody else beholden to you when they have their own shit to do.

Riese: Nope.

Marni: And I own that. But I did wait until after camp.

Riese: Congratulations.

Marni: I wasn’t saying that in a gloating way! I was intentional about the timing ’cause I felt like it’d be unfair to both of us to break up and then go into camp.

Riese: Yeah, but sometimes you can’t really do anything about the timing.

Marni: There’s always gonna be one more thing — that wedding at the end of the month, concert tickets. But also it was CAMP, and based on our two roles at camp… I thought we could stick it out for a little while longer.

Riese: Yeah. Right.

Marni: We saw how well that worked out.

Riese: I feel like when you know it’s not working, you at least have to talk about it, because I was so sad all year and I didn’t know why, I didn’t know what was happening with you, you know?

Marni: I hated reading that in that piece. It’s a thing people say a lot, I hated reading it, hearing it, seeing it. It was true. I was scared, I was a fucking coward, I didn’t wanna make the wrong choice, I was second-guessing myself, not trusting my own feelings. I was so scared of being wrong and doing the wrong thing that I put it off for longer than I should’ve for both of us. Not that it was all on me, like maybe if I hadn’t, you would’ve.

Riese: I think that’s what’s funny about how it ended up shaking out, was that we both saw a problem, and I wanted to talk to you about being poly and then you broke up with me and I was like OKAY welp I’m not gonna even say my thing.

Like for most of 2013, I’d been like, “Okay, this is my relationship, we live together, it’s fine, things feel off right now, but things will get better once I have less work and more money. So I’m gonna put THAT over THERE, and then right HERE I have my work and THAT needs attention.” I wasn’t paying attention.

Marni: Yeah and I definitely felt it, that you weren’t paying attention anymore and that you were absent. That had effects on me. For sure, like I felt like I was…. you were in your world and I just lived in it.

Riese: Yeah.

Marni: And cooked in it.

Riese: Right, and then it was 2014 and you checked out, and it became such a stressful year for me, work-wise, because we’d just started paying all our writers, we were in this contract selling ads with [redacted website] that was a nightmare for me and Alex. I was so stressed and sad. But I hadn’t been fair to you, leading up to that. You were such a good caretaker, even when I didn’t deserve it! I don’t remember what you’d just done, but I do remember sitting in the bathroom one day thinking, “Nobody else will ever take care of you as well as Marni does, so whatever happens, hang on to her.”

Marni: I did at some point start feeling a little taken for granted for the caretakerness. Like the cleaning and the cooking. Well, you did do most of the cleaning.

Riese: I did. But it was fair for you to feel that way.

Marni: But I do like planning meals and cooking.

Riese: What you learned from our relationship is that you like making dinner.

Marni: I learned that I really love food and cooking and I’ve become sort of an autodidact in that realm in the years following. No, the main thing I learned is not to waste anybody’s time.

Riese: Also we never fought.

Marni: Yeah, we weren’t in like a tempestuous relationship whre we could be like THAT’S IT! IT’S OVER! SLAM! There wasn’t any one thing to point to and be like okay NOW we’re breaking up.

Riese: Honestly, what I learned was that working all the time is not okay. It makes me a bad girlfriend and a bad worker and a really boring writer. I’d really let myself just go dead inside, and I missed the world, and I wanted to go out and meet its people and climb its hills and drive and fly all over it. I’d gotten into a rut and I got yanked out of it and that was a huge wake-up call that made me a much better person in the long run.

So question number Four: “what do you miss the most about me”?

Marni: Honestly what I miss the most about you is your sense of things. Like I can still text you or read your writing, but I appreciated daily access to the way you think about and articulate and see things. I miss hearing your opinion, you had a way of thinking about things that I wouldn’t think of. I often find myself wondering what you’d think about a thing — like, most recently, after Ghost Ship. I was wondering inwardly like, when is Riese gonna write about this? Nobody else is writing this thing that I want to read about what we’re all thinking! And then you wrote it and I was like, “there it is.”

Riese: It went viral, actually.

Marni: Did it?

Riese: Which surprised me, but it was nice to have that happen because I haven’t written very much this year.

Marni: No, you haven’t.

Riese: So I’m glad I could do that.

Marni: I also miss being as connected as I was to the Autostraddle community, like there’s still A-Camp. But when we met, I was the most intricately involved that I ever was — editing and writing. I miss my involvement that came from our connection. So. WHAT DO YOU MISS ABOUT ME?

Riese: In terms of how you were as a girlfriend — you’re very patient, and you make so much room for other people’s emotional realities, you know? I’ve never been with someone where I felt so safe emotionally, even if I was being dramatic, you were patient and understanding, your only goal was getting to the problem, solving the problem, or making things feel better. Like a week into our relationship, you came over to console me within ten minutes when I was upset about a fight with Laneia! When I was upset about YOU BREAKING UP WITH ME you were there for me, you know?

Marni: You miss being taken care of?

Riese: No, that’s not what I was talking about at all! And anyhow, no! It’s weird because except for you and Alex, all my relationships have been me being the caretaker or an even split. Obviously I’m so grateful for what you did — and Autostraddle should also be grateful! — but in the long term it wasn’t healthy for either of us to be so unbalanced. Anyhow BACK ON TOPIC, you just have so much empathy.  Like I remember when Cordelia was arrested at the airport for shoplifting and you were so upset and worried for her, and I was like How can you care so much about this person who tried to stab you with a knife?? And you were like, I’m just so sad thinking about her in a jail cell… and I was like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Marni: She didn’t try to *stab* me.

Riese: Also, even through the end, you were always cheering for me and supporting me, you’d work whatever event with me, you really wanted to see me succeed.

Riese: Also you knew stuff, from your life and academically, and were good to talk shit out with. I valued your opinion. You were interested in LGBT stuff and women’s rights and gender stuff and you were really clear-headed — that was kind of how it all began, on G-Chat, talking about these issues. You were fair, and able to balance like, “yeah this might be a risky thing to say, but it’s important to say.” You’re an extraordinary editor, too. You taught me a lot I didn’t know ’cause I had no academic background in this stuff.

Marni: Well that’s a high compliment!

Riese: Real talk; I can’t imagine how long it would’ve taken to edit the Judith Butler piece without you, ’cause Laneia and I were clueless on those topics. Okay, last question: would you invite me to your wedding, why or why not?

Marni: I don’t think either of us would’ve been waiting for the invitation in the mail.

Riese: I did feel weird about it when I was engaged and we were making an invite list, like would we invite all our friends but not Marni? I guess so.

Marni: I don’t have an invite list for a wedding at the moment so I don’t know if you’re on it. When I think about that I don’t think “oh for sure I would not invite Riese to the wedding.” So I can’t really say one way or another.

Riese: I probably wouldn’t go.

Marni: Well just to say… I’ll send you an invite, and then you can RSVP like “I can’t make it.”

Riese: No, I’m not gonna RSVP. You’re gonna have to ask me about it a few times.

Marni: I’ll just get married at camp.

Riese: You’ll be like “do you know yet about the wedding?” and I’ll be like “ehhh I dunno I’m still figuring it out.” So you guys can have “Riese (Plus One)” with a question mark on your list for as long as possible. I just wanna really drag it out so then when you ask me for the last time I can be like… “I feel like I’m torturing you.”

Marni: That would be perfect. Anyhow, I assume the SPIRIT of the question is, “are we amicable/friends enough that a wedding would not be dramatic,” and I think we are. It wouldn’t be outrageous or offensive or a heavy weighted thing.

Riese: Right, like there’s no leftover feelings or hard feelings.

Marni: Is that the end of the interview?

Riese: Yup.

Marni: How do you feel?

Riese: I feel like we processed our relationship.

Marni: Like we didn’t do that enough times before.

Riese: Well did we? We didn’t talk about things!

Marni: We didn’t talk about things during, that’s true. We didn’t sit down and talk about things or go to therapy but after we broke up we talked about some things.

Riese: I think part of what made the break-up easier is that when I got home that day after Abby and I got lost in the woods, it all kinda hit me at once… I’m so glad we broke up. It wasn’t right and hadn’t been for a long time. I still had to do the thing I always do where I re-play the whole relationship in my head through a new lens and overanalyze every interaction. But it was very easy to see everything clearly. You’d noticed something that I hadn’t noticed because I didn’t really know better, and wasn’t paying attention. So I was devastated in the moment, but okay pretty soon afterwards.

Marni: I think that speaks to the fact that it was what needed to happen.

Riese: Like I was sort of living a lie, and then it was over and I felt in control of my life again. Not like you’d been controlling, but because I’d checked out.

Marni: Right.

Riese: Those three months after we broke up but were still living together were pretty awful though. By the time you moved out we were like AT ODDS. We made it all that time without fighting at all, and then we fought a lot!

Marni: We didn’t have a huge blowout fight that ended our relationship, neither of us were “in the wrong.” But in those three months it went downhill really fast, even for us, who’d had the least dramatic and upsetting breakup you could imagine.

Riese: We somehow managed to be at each other’s throats.

Marni: I mean, we lived together, the real estate market was crazy, we couldn’t just like, move out and find a room.

Riese: And you were dating someone who had children, and I was dating someone who was basically homeless.

Marni: So neither of us could like go to another person’s place. It was not ideal. So maybe there’s nothing we could’ve done differently. It just… like you’re still friends and still care about them but you can’t really help them heal even if that’s the person you’ve always gone to for healing. The source of the conflict can’t be the resolution anymore, and that was hard. So… is there anything else you wanna touch on before we end this?

Riese: Uh, nope.

Marni: Any follow-up questions, any addendums?

Riese: I have none.

Marni: Has this been okay for you, has it been upsetting? Has there been any part of this interview that has surprised you or upset you?

Riese: SEE????