On February 12, 2023, it was Sunday again, which meant the 10 a.m. yoga flow, and guess who was there. I was so happy she was there again, because after how our last conversation ended with that guy so rudely interrupting us — or maybe he was trying to be helpful and pull me out of a situation — I was so glad we could talk and resume getting to know each other better. She had now started skipping going to the bathroom after class, and from the time we got into class together, we'd put our mats down next to each other, talk to each other the entire time, and walk out together.
It's disappointing, though, how little I was actually getting to know her with only five minutes before class and five minutes after class. We were both pretty prompt in letting each other go, because she usually had some work meeting she had to get to, or I needed to get back home to the family for something, or if it was Friday I had my AA meeting to go to. So it was very clear that I was going to need to get her phone number if we were ever going to be anything besides two people saying hi to each other at Yoga Buddies.
Two months of just talking at yoga
I was feeling pretty in control of the situation. It had been almost two months, and all we'd done was talk at yoga. It's no big deal, I told myself — although I thought about her every single day. I was honest about this again at my Alcoholics Anonymous home group meeting, and afterward Mickey pulled me aside. He's been sober over 40 years, and he started asking me some more questions about this girl, and about my family, and about my wife.
He finally said, "You know, based on what you've told me, if you keep going with this, this could lead to some destruction in your life. And based on what you've told me, you're being pretty cavalier about this. You're just being really nonchalant, like it's no big deal. You're not taking this very seriously." He said, "Jerry, this is a very serious thing. You have a deep emotional attachment with this girl. You have an intense relationship. It seems to be mutual, and this is not something to screw around with. This is the point where your life can be destroyed, where you could be back drinking after it doesn't work out with this girl at yoga, and then your wife leaves you, and then you could be back in the bottle, and you could be dead."
Realizing how close I'd gotten
And I realized, wow, he is absolutely right. I had been being way too cavalier about this, and not realizing how dangerously close I'd been to getting myself into a situation that I would deeply regret. So I asked him, "What should I do?"
He said, "You need to put some distance between you and her. Stop going to those yoga classes where you see her, because if you do that, it'll be done with, and it's fine. Nothing happened. That's all you need to do. This is so simple."
And as much as I didn't want to, as much as it felt awful, I knew he was right, and I knew he was looking out for me, because he's known me for years. He's listened to me very honestly share my life in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he's been through a divorce. He's been through the pain of having a relationship break up, and he's faced being alone, off and on, single for a long time now. He was encouraging me to realize how precious my marriage is, and that over the last two months I'd gotten dangerously close to having what could be a critical failure in it. Was I confident I could handle that and stay sober? And why even do that? Some of these things he said directly, and others he really got me thinking about and admitting to him myself. Having people in your corner who will tell you the truth like that has meant everything to me, and if you want to talk through your own close calls before they ever turn into regrets, you can join Jerry Banfield Family and bring them to a weekly call.
The decision
So as bad as I felt about it, I told him I'm not going to keep doing this. I told him I would let her know that I can't make that Sunday yoga class anymore. She hadn't been at the Friday class as much, and I love going to that Friday class right before my meeting. The problem really seemed to be this Sunday class. When I saw her on Sundays, that was where, if she wanted to go out to lunch afterward — which I'd thought about a bunch of times, and there was that one day where I could have stayed for the whole day. The Friday meeting, I'm pretty safe. If I just didn't see her on Sundays, that would probably kill the entire momentum of this.
So I decided I'm going to tell her next week that I can't keep coming to Sunday class. And since she's expecting me to be there next week, the considerate thing to do is to tell her to her face and not just ghost her. If you find honest reflections like this one useful, this is the kind of day-to-day living I keep working through in my Life playlist.