A Love Story in Four Parts: Overcoming Communication Toxins (Part 1 of 4: The Merritt Parkway)

[Running an experiment this week: Publishing fiction on LinkedIn! Curious to hear your feedback in the comments or in a DM.]

If you’d asked Tom why he and Sally broke up, he wouldn’t have been able to give an answer. Sally on the other hand could answer, but she wouldn’t have wanted to. It was a pretty dumb reason to break up. In fact, compared to all the other decisions and compromises they’d successfully dealt with recently, it seemed shocking that their relationship could flame out over something so petty.

Sally and Tom had met at the start of their first year at UMass Amherst. They were both assigned to the same hall as first-year students and became fast friends. They couldn’t be more different. Tom was a dreamer, still figuring out what he wanted to be, while Sally was laser focused, constantly moving towards her goals.

But Sally loved being friends with Tom. She loved spending hours in her downtime just talking to him about any old topic and hearing his funny perspectives. And Tom was a bit in awe of Sally. He hadn’t really known anything about her by the time they were already friends: he’d cracked a joke behind the RA’s back, she’d laughed. But once he’d gotten to know her he was so impressed he’d doubted he’d have had the confidence to make the joke if he’d known more about her.

Sure, Tom had known plenty of athletes, had been an athlete himself in high school, but the commitment of Sally to not only be playing softball at the Division I level, but to have received a scholarship for her ability, talent, and, as Tom got to know Sally, incredibly hard work just blew him away. Not only that, but Sally had started freshman year already knowing her major and what career she wanted. And her choice was not only eminently practical it also encompassed one of her passions. She’d learned to code relatively young, and had placed nationally on her high school coding team. Not only that, but she and two friends had also already built several simple apps.

And that was Sally. She had a plan, and when she knew what she wanted she went after it. If that meant training extra hard to be the best player she could be or staying up all night on a computer science project, that’s what she did. And at the start of junior year it also meant telling Tom that as much as she loved being friends with him, she would prefer trying to be more than friends.

Tom had been weighing if he had the courage to bring up this exact topic with Sally and thanked his lucky stars he didn’t have to find out. But it soon started to seem to Sally that despite being really happy to be in a relationship with Tom, that decision to be in one had been the last thing she and Tom had easily agreed upon.

It started with Tom’s major. That this could be the primary source of conflict in their relationship was somewhat astounding to Sally. She’d never given a second thought to hers being Computer Science. She did spend a lot of time thinking about adding a possible minor, but those were pleasing thoughts: ideas of subjects she could study for fun.

But for Tom, the decision of a major had become fraught and was now well overdue as well. And somehow, pretty early into their relationship, Tom’s choice of major became their central fight. And yet Sally was never certain what they were fighting about, or at least why.

The truth was she didn’t care all that much what Tom majored in, but every time Tom brought up the subject, it was as though he were reacting to some criticism on Sally’s part. He’d been supposed to fill out preliminary paperwork for his major in his sophomore spring, and by the time they started dating at the start of their freshman year, he was feeling pressure from the registrar’s office.

There was a constant back and forth of emails between Sue at the registrar’s office and Tom, which finally culminated in Sue informing Tom that he wouldn’t be able to register for spring classes if he hadn’t officially declared a major.

“You know there is no need for this to be a final decision, although difficult, you can still change in your senior year provided you have the credits.”

Sally rolled her eyes when she read this kindhearted addendum to Sue’s email. ‘Just what Tom needs, more indecision’ she thought. She’d been rolling her eyes a lot lately. Basically, every time Tom brought up the topic of his major. It had just gotten so repetitive and the way he talked about it just seemed silly to her.

“So I was thinking Anthropology,” he’d say. Or History or Psychology or Earth Sciences. It could truly be anything. But most often, Sally noticed, it was English literature he was thinking.

And when Sally was trying to be helpful, she’d respond asking what he’d go on to do with the major, as that seemed to her to be one of the central questions in making the final choice. And at asking, Tom would immediately become defensive.

“You know Sally, not everything has to be about career. There’s a reason that they call it a liberal arts education. An English major isn’t the worst thing in the world, there are lots of things you can do with an English major.”

Sally wasn’t disputing this, but she felt a career was pretty important, and she didn’t understand why Tom didn’t think about this more. Usually, the argument ended with Sally getting defensive.

“You know picking your major is not my job, Tom.”

And Tom would have to acknowledge that this was true. But Tom felt like he should be able to discuss what his current central life quandary was with his girlfriend. Instead, every time he brought the subject up he felt attacked. For bringing up the topic at all and for not knowing what he wanted to do with his life.

Sally always seemed to become sarcastic when he brought up the topic, rolling her eyes. It hurt Tom, and he felt like she looked down on him because he hadn’t chosen a major.

The day Tom came to Sally’s dorm room and announced that he’d officially declared himself an English major, Sally was surprised not because he’d chosen English, but because of the defensive tone Tom took when he walked into the room.

Caught entirely off guard, Sally said, “But aren’t you happy about it, to have finally chosen?”

“Well, I guess you’re happy you don’t have to have this discussion anymore.”

“Yes, I think I am, but I’m much happier that you chose, and I think English is a great choice. It seems like that’s what you most wanted.”

“I thought you’d be disappointed in English.”

“Why would I be disappointed in that?”

“Well, it doesn’t lead to a career like Computer Science.”

Sally shook her head. She was just glad Tom had finally chosen a major and thought English was what Tom most wanted. She was glad she wasn’t going to have to have this same strange argument again, and she hoped that the discussion of Tom’s future career wouldn’t lead to such big arguments.

And at first it didn’t. Tom was thinking about finance, law, or even medicine. The last option would require a lot of classes which Tom hadn’t taken, and at this point, with his English major requirements, he’d have to do summer school or take some pre-med classes after graduation.

And that’s where the next big argument started. Sally had a really incredible internship at a startup in San Francisco, whereas Tom wanted to stay on the UMass campus to try out some pre-med classes to see if it was what he wanted to do.

Both agreed that staying together for the summer was important. They didn’t get to spend nearly as much time together as they liked during the school year. Sally was required to live on campus in a dorm because of her scholarship, and both were so busy with academics as they were taking more advanced classes.

“Oh Tom, just come to San Francisco with me. You could take classes out there, and besides, you know you’re not serious about being a doctor. Do you really think you could commit to something like that for all those years? Intern for a law firm in San Francisco.”

Tom felt attacked. But he went to San Francisco regardless and compromised by taking organic chemistry and finding a part-time job as a paralegal. He hated everything about studying organic chemistry and found work in the law firm inspiring, and from then on out, it was as though he had a fire lit under him.

Sally couldn’t have been happier, as she watched him study mightily for the LSATs and spend hours applying to law schools. Little could she know that it would lead to the biggest fight of their young relationship, and would result in a permanent impact on her life.

Sally couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know she wanted to spend her life working with computers. It was her dream, and as a result, she always assumed that after college, she’d head out the Bay Area. She and Tom had had an incredible summer out there and she assumed that’s where they’d go after college, but then they got Tom’s acceptance and rejection letters.

Tom had applied to Berkeley as his dream school, and also applied to UCSF as one that would be a pretty safe bet with his high LSAT scores. He’d also applied to Georgetown, NYU and Fordham. He was rejected from Berkeley, but hadn’t expected to get in everywhere else he’d applied. What’s more, he’d received a sizable merit-based scholarship from Fordham, one that would greatly reduce his need to take on student debt.

It seemed clear to Tom that his brightest future was on the east coast.

“Come on Sally, it’s not like they don’t have incredible tech companies in New York.”

Sally would tend not to engage with this, she had a hard time taking this argument seriously. She’d respond in a sarcastic tone, “as if I’m going to move to New York, you know the plan has always been the Bay area.”

“That’s your plan Sally, you always make it about your plan. Last summer we just had to spend in San Francisco. Are you going to be dictating where we go and what we do forever.”

Sally hardly thought that was fair and went on the defensive.

Looking back, after the breakup, it seemed inconceivable their relationship had survived that argument. But in the end, to everyone’s shock and amazement, Sally took a job in New York. It didn’t hurt that it was with one of the world’s most respected tech companies. Tom was right, every company over a certain size had New York offices.

It was towards the end of their senior spring when Tom and Sally took a road trip down to the city to find an apartment for the start of summer. Coming home, Sally became frustrated that Tom wasn’t really engaging with her about which apartment he preferred. He just didn’t seem to care that much, but it seemed like an important decision to Sally.

“To be honest, this one just isn’t too important to me, you decide.”

“Fine, wait, did you just get on the Merritt Parkway?”

“Yeah, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I thought we’d take the scenic route back.”

“But I told you I have a huge project due tomorrow. Why would you not even ask me? I would have said to stay on I-91.”

“What’s the big deal, it’s a half hour, maybe.”

“It could easily be an hour with traffic.”

“Come on, we never hit traffic on the Merritt, baby.”

Tom had been right, there wasn’t traffic and it just added about half an hour. But that wasn’t the point, and when Sally made up her mind about something, it was made up, and Sally had decided she was breaking up with Tom because he took the Merritt Parkway instead of I-91.

I mean, that sounded so stupid. And it wasn’t which road they took, but the idea of the whole thing, that Tom hadn’t even asked her the way that she wanted to go. She had hoped that the arguing would stop once they’d solved all the obstacles and here they were about to choose an apartment in New York City, but they didn’t seem to communicate with each other any better.

For the rest of the ride, Sally turned into a stone wall. Tom knew he was in big trouble, but he wasn’t quite sure why, everything finally seemed to be going fine. When they arrived back in Amherst, Sally got out of the car, said, “I’m done” and those were the last words Sally spoke to Tom for three years.