THE CARL THE CORRECTOR SERIES

Part Five

Maybe the impression wasn't wrong. Maybe I had just misunderstood what it meant.

By the end of Part 4, I had finally started asking a question I had avoided for most of my relationship with Carl:

What if I'm not supposed to make this work?

And once that question entered the room...

it became really hard to get it to leave. 😬

For most of our relationship, whenever something bothered me, I had found somewhere to put it.

A concern?

Look at all the good.

Something on my Cannot list?

People grow.

A correction?

He means well.

A prompting to end the relationship?

Maybe I'm overthinking.

There was always another explanation.

Another reason.

Another way to keep moving forward.

But eventually...

I ran out of places to put things.

The Back Burner Was Officially Boiling Over

It was getting close to Christmas.

Carl and I had been dating for around two months.

And all those things I had been putting on the back burner?

They were no longer quietly simmering back there.

They were boiling over.

The concerns I had learned about near the beginning.

The things that landed on my 10 Cannots.

The corrections.

The moments that rubbed me the wrong way.

The imbalance I was beginning to notice.

The prompting I hadn't followed.

The spiritual confusion I had created trying to figure out whether Carl was my person.

It all started catching up with me.

And I felt...

overwhelmed.

I was tired of analyzing.

Tired of trying to figure out which things mattered and which things didn't.

Tired of wondering whether I was being too picky.

Tired of convincing myself everything was okay whenever something inside me said it wasn't.

And something between Carl and me was changing too.

Meanwhile...Something Between Us Was Changing

Carl and I had started pulling back from each other.

Not dramatically.

There wasn't some giant fight.

Nobody slammed a door.

Nobody dramatically screamed:

“IT'S OVER, CARL!”

while Christmas music played tragically in the background. 😂

It was quieter than that.

The excitement we'd had in the beginning started turning into hesitation.

We were still together.

Still talking.

Still trying to act normal.

But something felt different.

There was this...

elephant in the room.

And I think both of us knew it was there.

What I didn't know at the time was that Carl had been having his own internal experience with our relationship too.

He hadn't told me.

So from my side, all I could see was the shift.

He seemed more hesitant.

I was more hesitant.

We were both pulling back a little.

But I didn't actually know what was happening inside his head.

And apparently...

the people around me were noticing the shift too.

The People Around Me Could See It Too

My family and friends had started noticing how much this relationship was affecting me.

They could see that I was confused.

They could see that I wasn't quite myself.

They could see how much mental and emotional energy I was spending trying to figure Carl and our relationship out.

But something I really appreciate looking back is that they didn't sit me down and say:

“Alaina, you need to break up with him.”

They didn't make the decision for me.

Instead, they encouraged me to give myself some space.

Maybe take a little break.

Step away from the constant togetherness for a minute.

Spend some time thinking about all the things that had been confusing me.

Basically...

stop trying to solve the relationship while I was standing right in the middle of it.

And I think I needed that.

Because Carl had become such a huge part of my everyday life that I hadn't left myself much quiet space to actually think.

So I started trying to sort through everything I had been carrying.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized...

I knew we couldn't keep pretending everything was normal.

There was too much sitting underneath the surface.

And I had SO much I wanted to say.

Which was a problem.

Because apparently after spending weeks struggling to say what I actually felt...

I now had approximately seventeen emotional tabs open at once. 😂

I didn't know how to explain all of it.

How do you tell someone:

I really care about you.

There are things I genuinely love about this relationship.

There are things about you I really admire.

And also...I've been questioning this relationship almost the entire time.

That's not exactly casual conversation.

So I did what Alaina does when her brain has approximately 4,000 thoughts and her mouth cannot be trusted to organize them properly.

I wrote it down.

And Then I Wrote Carl a Letter

I wrote down my concerns.

The things that had confused me.

The things I hadn't known how to explain.

The things I had been carrying around quietly.

Everything I wanted Carl to understand but wasn't sure I would be able to say once he was sitting in front of me.

And...

there's one part of that letter I'm slightly embarrassed to admit now. 😬😂

Because mixed into all those concerns...

I also told Carl that I thought I was falling in love with him.

Yep.

There I was essentially writing:

Here are several reasons I'm deeply confused about our relationship.

Also...I think I'm falling in love with you.

Very emotionally consistent of me. 😂

But that's genuinely where I was.

I was conflicted.

I cared about him deeply.

I was attached to him.

I loved being his girlfriend in a lot of ways.

And at the time, I thought what I was beginning to feel might be love.

Looking back now, I'm not completely sure I would call all of it love.

Maybe part of it was.

Maybe part of it was attachment.

Hope.

Potential.

The intensity of becoming part of each other's everyday lives so quickly.

And probably some love for what I thought the relationship could become.

But at the time?

I didn't have all that hindsight.

I just knew my feelings for Carl were getting stronger...

at the exact same time my concerns were getting louder.

Which is a VERY confusing place to be.

Apparently my heart and my brain had decided to hold opposing campaign rallies. 😂

And that's what went into the letter.

Not exactly a breakup letter.

Not exactly a love letter.

Honestly?

A little bit of both.

“Can I Come Over and Talk?”

Carl and I had plans to get together.

And then...

he canceled.

Which, obviously, did wonders for my already extremely calm relationship brain. 😂

But then I got a phone call from him.

He asked if he could come over.

He wanted to talk.

And immediately I knew:

Oh.

This wasn't going to be a normal hangout.

For once, Carl and I were VERY much on the same wavelength. 😬

We needed to talk about our relationship.

He came over and picked me up.

And we went for a drive.

And...

it was awkward.

SO awkward. 😂

We both clearly had things on our minds.

We both knew there was something we needed to say.

Neither of us seemed to know how to actually start saying it.

So there we were...

driving around with approximately 700 pounds of unspoken relationship tension sitting in the car with us.

Very relaxing.

Very casual. 😂

Eventually, I decided:

Okay.

Be brave.

Because I had something with me.

The letter.

This Time, I Actually Said It

I told Carl that I had written something I wanted to read to him.

Looking back?

A little cringe. 😂

Sitting in a car telling your boyfriend:

I have prepared a letter.

Very main-character of me.

But you know what?

I'm also proud of myself for it.

Because I had spent so much of this relationship struggling to say what I actually felt.

I had softened things.

Dismissed things.

Explained things away.

Carl had literally asked me before:

“Do you feel like I'm correcting you?”

And I hadn't been able to say yes.

So even if reading a letter to my boyfriend in the car wasn't exactly the world's smoothest relationship conversation...

I was finally being straightforward.

I read it.

I told him what had been bothering me.

I explained the confusion I had been carrying.

I told him the things I hadn't known how to say.

And yes...

I also read the part where I said I thought I was falling in love with him.

Which is even more uncomfortable to remember considering what happened approximately five seconds later. 😬😂

But I said it.

All of it.

I finally let Carl hear what had actually been happening inside me.

And when I finished...

he paused.

Then he said:

“I would love to respond...but I can't.”

...

Oh.

That was not the response I had prepared for. 😬

And then he told me:

“I think we should break up.”

And Then Carl Told Me What I Hadn't Known

That was when Carl finally told me something he had been keeping to himself.

While I had been quietly wrestling with whether I needed to end our relationship...

he had been wrestling too.

I hadn't known that.

He hadn't come to me when those feelings first started.

He hadn't told me:

Hey, I've been questioning us too.

So while I had been over on my side praying, analyzing, questioning, making lists, writing letters and apparently falling in love at the most inconvenient possible time... 😂

Carl had been having his own experience privately.

And he told me about something that had happened while he was at the temple.

That caught my attention immediately.

Because going to the temple together had been one of the things I genuinely loved about our relationship.

Faith was important to both of us.

The fact that we could share that part of our lives had been one more thing I had placed in my mental:

LOOK HOW MUCH THIS RELATIONSHIP MAKES SENSE

folder.

But Carl told me that while he was at the temple, he had had an experience that made him feel like he needed to end our relationship.

And the way he explained it was basically that...

being with me was keeping him from the person he was ultimately meant to be with.

...

Hmm...interesting. 🤔

I didn't really know what to do with that.

Part of me believed him.

I mean...

I had also had a spiritual impression that we needed to end the relationship.

So there was definitely a part of me thinking:

Okay.

Maybe we really HAVE both been getting pointed toward the same answer.

But another part of me wasn't totally sure what I thought about the way he explained it.

I'm keeping you from the person you're destined to be with?

That's...

a sentence. 😂

And especially after everything I had gone through trying to understand my OWN impressions correctly, I wasn't exactly in a position to confidently interpret someone else's spiritual experience for them.

So I didn't.

I could believe that Carl had genuinely felt something.

I could believe that his experience had led him to question our relationship.

And I could also leave the rest with him.

I didn't need to decide exactly what his experience meant.

Because whatever wording either of us used...

We both believed the relationship needed to end.

This time...

we really were on the same wavelength.

Just perhaps not in the way I had originally hoped. 😬😂

And Then There Was Peace

And in that moment...

I felt something I had been searching for almost the entire relationship.

Peace.

Not:

Maybe.

Not:

But what if...

Not:

Let me analyze this seventeen more times. 😂

Peace.

And from what I could tell...

Carl felt it too.

There was sadness.

Of course there was.

Especially because I had literally JUST read this man a letter telling him I thought I was falling in love with him.

So...

excellent timing all around. 😬😂

But seriously, ending it still hurt.

We had spent two months becoming attached to each other.

Carl had become part of my everyday life.

His family had become part of my life.

We had routines.

Memories.

Inside jokes.

Plans.

You don't turn all of that off just because you realize a relationship shouldn't continue.

I cared about him.

Whatever exact word I would use for those feelings now...

they were real to me then.

And ending something with someone you care about still hurts...

even when you know ending it is right.

But underneath the sadness was something I hadn't felt in a while.

Relief.

The arguing inside me stopped.

I didn't have to keep making a case anymore.

I didn't have to keep deciding whether one concern mattered enough.

I didn't have to keep stacking good qualities against uncomfortable feelings.

I didn't have to keep turning red lights into green ones.

It was over.

And somehow...

I finally felt still.

Wait...Hadn't I Felt This Before?

And that's when I had to face something slightly uncomfortable.

Because this peace?

This clarity?

This feeling that ending the relationship was right?

It wasn't exactly new information.

I had felt:

You need to end this relationship

near the beginning.

And now...

two months later...

here I was.

Ending the relationship.

The destination hadn't changed.

I had just taken a VERY scenic route getting there. 😂

And looking back, that's one of the things that stands out to me most.

I had spent so much time believing I needed to understand WHY before I could act.

Why would God tell me to leave someone with so many good qualities?

Why would I feel prompted to end something that looked promising?

Why would Carl be on my wavelength if we weren't supposed to be together?

I wanted the entire explanation.

Preferably color-coded.

With footnotes.

And perhaps a PowerPoint. 😂

But I didn't have the whole picture then.

I only had the direction.

And I didn't trust it because I couldn't make it make sense.

Now?

It was starting to make a little more sense.

But there was still one question left.

The question that had followed me through this ENTIRE relationship.

What about the wavelength?

So...Was I Wrong About Carl?

This was the part I had to go all the way back to the beginning to understand.

Before Carl and I were even dating, I had felt that impression:

He's on your wavelength.

And I had spent most of the relationship treating those words like they meant:

This is your person.

But...

that's not actually what I had felt.

I hadn't felt:

You're going to marry Carl.

I hadn't felt:

Stay with Carl no matter what.

I hadn't felt:

Ignore everything else because this relationship is supposed to work.

I had felt:

He's on your wavelength.

That was it.

And eventually I started wondering...

what if that impression had been completely true?

What if I hadn't heard it wrong?

What if I had interpreted it wrong?

Because Carl and I DID share a wavelength in a lot of ways.

Faith mattered to both of us.

We had similar standards.

We shared interests.

We liked being active.

We could talk about God.

We cared about growth.

There were things about the future that seemed to line up.

Those things didn't suddenly become fake because the relationship ended.

Maybe we really WERE on a similar wavelength.

But this relationship taught me something I hadn't understood before:

Wavelength wasn't enough.

Same Wavelength...Different Frequency

This is the best way I've learned to describe it.

Imagine two people who want many of the same big things.

Same values.

Same faith.

Same priorities.

Same general direction.

That's the wavelength.

And Carl and I had quite a bit of that.

That's why the relationship looked so promising to me.

But then there was everything that happened inside the relationship.

How did we communicate?

How did we handle differences?

What happened when one person felt hurt?

Could we influence each other?

Could we disagree without one person feeling like they needed to shrink?

Did we make room for each other's worlds?

Could I say:

This bothers me

without first proving that Carl was objectively wrong?

Could we listen to each other's experiences even when we experienced the same situation differently?

Could we both sacrifice?

Could we both bend?

Could we both grow?

Could we stay ourselves while also becoming an us?

That...

was different.

That's what I now think of as frequency.

We could want similar things...

and still move through a relationship very differently.

We could share faith...

and still communicate differently.

We could both value growth...

and still approach learning, feedback, and influence differently.

We could both want a good relationship...

and still not create a relationship that felt good for both of us.

And suddenly that first impression made so much more sense to me.

He's on your wavelength.

Maybe God hadn't been telling me:

This is your husband.

Maybe I was being shown something I genuinely needed to learn.

Because before Carl, I had put SO much emphasis on finding someone who matched me in those big-picture ways.

Faith.

Values.

Standards.

Goals.

And those things still matter enormously to me.

But Carl taught me:

I don't only want someone on my wavelength.

I want someone whose frequency works with mine too.

Someone where the relationship itself has room for both people.

Where we can influence each other.

Where I can speak honestly.

Where he can speak honestly.

Where disagreement doesn't automatically mean something is wrong.

Where both people are curious about each other's worlds.

Where both people sacrifice.

Where growth doesn't feel like one person is constantly teaching and the other is constantly being improved.

Where I don't have to become less of myself to make the relationship work.

That was the piece I hadn't known I was missing.

And Suddenly...The Whole Relationship Looked Different

That's why I don't look back at Carl and think:

Wow. What a complete waste of two months.

Not at all.

There were things I genuinely enjoyed.

There were things Carl brought into my life that were good.

And there were things I learned about myself that I really needed to learn.

I learned that I can make a beautiful list of my standards...

and still negotiate with it when I really like someone. 😂

I learned that someone's intentions don't determine whether I'm allowed to have feelings about how something affects me.

I learned that being technically right isn't always the most important thing happening in a conversation.

I learned how easily I can become wrapped up in a relationship and stop creating enough space for my own friendships, interests, and life.

I learned that I need to be able to say:

“Yes. This bothers me.”

Even when the other person didn't mean to bother me.

And maybe most importantly...

I learned something about how I wanted God involved in my dating life.

I didn't want to keep asking for direction...

and then negotiate with the answer until I got one I liked.

That one hurt a little. 😬

Because I genuinely believed I had been trying to follow God.

And I had.

But I had also wanted Carl badly enough that sometimes my desire got tangled up with my discernment.

After the relationship ended, I had to rebuild some trust there.

Not trust in God.

Trust in my ability to listen without immediately arguing my case.

Trust that I didn't always need the whole explanation before taking the next step.

Trust that a “no” didn't mean something was terrible.

Sometimes...

it simply meant:

Not this.

And that was enough.

I Didn't Need Carl to Be the Bad Guy

I think this is one of the biggest things I understand differently now.

For so much of the relationship, I thought I needed enough evidence to prove Carl was wrong for me.

I wanted something concrete.

Something undeniable.

Something that would justify leaving.

But Carl didn't have to become a villain for me to decide the relationship wasn't right.

He could be a good person.

He could have qualities I admired.

He could make me laugh.

He could take notes at church.

We could go to the temple together.

He could seem excited to introduce me to people.

He could enjoy watching me sing karaoke even when karaoke definitely wasn't his thing. 😂

He could mean well.

And we could still not be right for each other.

Both could be true.

That was incredibly freeing for me to understand.

Because dating isn't always about figuring out:

Who is wrong?

Sometimes it's figuring out:

Are we right together?

Those are very different questions.

And Carl helped me learn the difference.

The Red Light Finally Made Sense

I think back to that beautiful sunny day.

Music off.

Quiet car.

And that simple thought:

You need to end this relationship.

At the time, I thought:

But WHY?

I wanted proof.

I wanted an explanation.

I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen and exactly why this wasn't right for me.

Instead...

I got a direction.

And I ran the red light anyway. 😬😂

Two months later, I finally stopped.

And when I did...

there was peace.

Not because Carl was horrible.

Not because every moment had been bad.

Not because I had finally gathered enough evidence to win some imaginary case against him.

There was peace because I finally stopped trying to force something I had been struggling so hard to make fit.

And looking back...

I'm grateful.

Grateful for Carl.

Grateful for the good.

Grateful for the uncomfortable moments.

Grateful for the things I learned about relationships.

Grateful for what I learned about myself.

And especially grateful for the patience I was given while I took the scenic route. 😂

Because maybe:

He's on your wavelength

was never supposed to mean:

He's your person.

Maybe it was an invitation to learn something I wouldn't have understood otherwise.

That shared values matter.

Shared faith matters.

Shared goals matter.

Wavelength matters.

But so does the way two people actually move through life together.

The communication.

The connection.

The reciprocity.

The ability to influence and be influenced.

The ability to make space for each other's worlds.

The ability to remain fully yourself while building something together.

The frequency.

Carl really may have been on my wavelength.

And maybe...

that was exactly what I needed him to be so I could finally learn that I was looking for more than wavelength alone.

Sometimes the answer isn't:

This person is bad.

Sometimes it's simply:

This person isn't mine.

And sometimes the relationship you tried SO hard to make work...

ends up teaching you what you're actually looking for.

Even if it takes you two months, approximately seventeen internal debates, one relationship dissertation...

and a spiritual relationship PowerPoint presentation to figure it out. 😂

END OF THE CARL THE CORRECTOR STORY

Next: What This Relationship Actually Taught Me →

The relationship ended, but the lessons definitely didn't. There were things Carl taught me about communication, compatibility, listening to myself, and what I actually need in a relationship that followed me long after the breakup.

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