I haven’t written about relationship stuff in a very long time because I haven’t been in one for a very long time. Not to sound like a broken record to those of you who’ve read this in the past but, my grand idea was to go to therapy and have my wonderful shrink turn me into the best partner a woman could ask for. I thought of a good round number–a year! After a year, I will unleash my resolved and healed ass out into the world and go have the best relationship anyone on Facebook has ever seen pictures of.
Here’s what I learned: it doesn’t work like that. A year is an arbitrary number of days that hold no special significance. Second, healed and resolved is not black and white, nor is it a destination. No one will ever arrive there. It will come in and go out like the tide and we will hopefully become better equipped to follow it and go with the flow, but that’s as good as it gets.
Finally, I don’t control relationships. If they suck, the most responsibility I’m allowed to take is 50%. So all the therapy in the world is not going to help me if my partner is an asshole.
Oh and speaking of, I’m going to admit some not very flattering things about myself: I was not what one might consider “a good catch” in my early twenties. I grew up in a very f*cked up and codependent household, I was extraordinarily self-centered and self-involved and would only ever take other people’s feelings into account if I was being forced to and couldn’t find a viable escape plan. And even in those rare instances, I would build a case, to myself, of how idiotic and melodramatic anyone who ever tried to make me face those things, was.
In one instance, in my early twenties, I dated someone for an entire month, trying so hard to get them to sleep with me and once they finally did (after an entire month) I broke up with them and slept with their friend the next day. There were all kinds of extenuating circumstances, but when one clears all the bullshit away, this is the long and short of it.
So, when I ran into this injured party, twenty years later, nostalgia and hormones compelled me to pursue her again. Her attitude was, “I’m not silly enough to still be mad over what happened twenty years ago, but I’m never going to let you sleep with me again. Not even in twenty more years.”
As many of my friends will attest, I love a good challenge. With regard to the lady in question, I continued taking her on dates as often as she’d allow and being a perfect gentleman, oftentimes shaking her hand at the end. After a year, I finally laid my cards on the table: I wrote her a song that essentially said “I don’t care if you keep me in this friend zone until the rapture, one night very soon, I’m going to kiss you and there ain’t a damn thing you’re gonna do about it.”
We lasted for six years, which for me, is an eternity. My feelings for her were mature and profound and right up to the minute I left (and beyond) I always found her lovely and desirable. As most of you know, that just isn’t enough to keep two people together sometimes. (Idea for next week?)
Here’s what I am getting at: when I really take an extended period of time and get to learn about someone, the chances of the relationship having longevity increases by leaps and bounds. When there is a friendship with a person one is romantically attached to, the earth takes on a different dimension. All intellect aside, nothing feels like being loved by someone you truly love.
Now, for all my budding psychologists, I’d like to forego any diagnostics this time out. As a society, we have reached a point where everyone on the web can diagnose everyone else and phrases that were once only in the purview of professionals are now used as insults, like jerkoff or shithead. My suspicion is that there are a lot less narcissists on the planet than most people assume, and way less “empaths” and in the fifties and sixties they were simply referred to as idiots and martyrs. As in “Why are those two still together? Jack is an idiot and Emma is just a martyr.”
Recently, I met someone who I am both, very attracted to and happily interested in. Beautiful and engaging and selfless and sweet. She was very cautious about how long it took before we finally met in person, and that made it all the more exciting. It looks like when one of those rare and magnificent flowers shows up by chance in your garden and it’s almost about to bloom. The stage of anticipation and anxious expectation.
And maybe my therapist hasn’t gotten around to performing enough of a behavioral lobotomy on me to get me 100% healed and resolved, she has, at least, gotten me prepared for crash landings and surprise endings. And, at this stage, those tools are likely much more important.
But wish me luck anyway.
Here's to hoping your flower is ready to blossom in early spring delight. Great read, Billy. Thank you