By Erica Erotica

During the two years and four months that I dated my boyfriend…wait…my now-ex-boyfriend, we had always struggled with the fact that I am Catholic and he is agnostic. The relationship was everything we could ask for; there was just that one lingering weight over our shoulders.

When we began dating over two years ago, my faith was just recovering from years of being boxed up somewhere in my head. As the relationship grew stronger, my faith also developed further. After our first year together, we talked about marriage, life after college and families. We were crazy about each other; we wanted to make sure that years from then we could make it work.

I expressed my concern that he was not going to be able to support me spiritually, so he went to church with me, prayed with me and had discussions about religion with me. Despite our attempts, something was missing. We lacked a deeper connection I needed.

Just like one of my friends said, there was a difference between acting on a request and acting on faith. She said that I needed more than just saying words of prayer; I needed someone who believed in the prayer.

For the last month and a half of the relationship, I truly felt as though something was missing. There was a void. He was extremely happy, but I just wasn’t as happy as I should have been. I couldn’t picture life without him, but at the same time I couldn’t picture life with someone wasn’t sure about God.

“Sometimes you have to think of yourself,” a girl friend said. “You can’t stay in a relationship you’re not happy about. It’s not fair for either of you. You’re not putting 100 percent into it.”

And it’s not just faith that could be missing. A friend went out with a guy who never wanted children for three years thinking that maybe she could live with it. She thought that she could change for him, but she eventually realized that she was never going to be happy.

Another friend broke up with her ex-boyfriend because they were at different stages in life. She wanted to go to graduate school, to travel and to accomplish so much in her life. He, on the other hand, was in community college for three years before realizing he had no idea what he wanted.

“Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt and accessorize what we’ve got,” Carrie Bradshaw once said.

But there are some things that are just not negotiable. For me, I need someone who can lead me in my faith. I need someone who will support me wholeheartedly with the most important thing in my life: God.

Sometimes I wanted to forget and pretend that everything was going to be okay. People keep telling me that maybe it’s for the best. I have no idea what that means, and, quite frankly, being single again is lonely.

But every relationship is a two-way road. I can’t compromise my own happiness for the happiness of another, no matter how much I still love him. My faith makes me happy; I want someone to be as happy about that as I am.

Another Carrie Bradshaw quote sticks out in my head. She once said, “Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.”

Amen to that.