bhello Esther,
after so many months, I too finally find the courage to tell you the story with my Sarratore, who I will call Mino.
I know him in a chat in May of last year, 50 years old like me. Breathtakingly beautiful, grizzled, super sporty with a recently closed marriage. So much so that he hasn’t separated yet and lives a few hundred meters from the original marital roof, to be close to his children, he says. He claims to have bought a house which, however, needs to be renovated and is currently uninhabitable and the works, you know, go very slowly.
Which is why I, who live about 100 km away, cannot go to him, too embarrassing for Mino to show a woman coming out of her house with in-laws and children around the corner.
He too is 50 years old and in crisis
So I start this unbalanced relationship that after less than two months he already has the first crisis. He he’s not ready for a serious relationship like the one I want and blah, blah, blah…
I’m leaving for a job opportunity that also adds the sea to the geographical distance and our M., questions everything and declares that he wants to try again.
This rethinking will be followed by others, cyclically, which he (and I…) justifies with his not yet being ready to let go, with the fear of suffering again and so on.
Seeing each other more often scares him
Months go by and in early January my business trip ends. The prospect of seeing each other more frequently now, after months apart, instead of reassuring M. plunges him back into panic and leaves me for the third time. The script is now clear, so this time he too comes back repentant declaring that he has finally understood that he no longer wants to give up on me.
We celebrate Valentine’s Day in a splendid SPA first and then his birthday in April. It seems that the clouds of uncertainty have finally dissolved. At the end of April I decide to invite him to my nephew’s christening and he leaves with me. It’s time for the official presentations. M. is adorable and easily conquers relatives and friends to whom I introduce him.
He doesn’t introduce me to friends and relatives
After this long introduction I come to the point…
In all this period I have not received any invitation from M. to come to his parts. I don’t know any relatives or friends. Nothing. I’m starting to be impatient and I make no secret of it, this generates discussions that lead nowhere.
I manage to invite myself to him for Easter Monday and we take a short ride on his boat, but even on that occasion I don’t meet or know anyone.
He left me for the fourth time
In early May he tells me that I am very important to him and for a month or so he started talking to his wife about the separation. Here we go, I think. Then the confession: the house that he had initially declared to be unusable had actually been rented out and he no longer wants to live with this burden and he shares it with me. I feel terrible about it. I cry, I feel betrayed. He doesn’t have the slightest understanding and actually reacts indignant and offended because I don’t appreciate his openness towards me.
The discussion seems to be reassembled to then fall and finally him he decides to leave me again because my way of handling conflicts just doesn’t suit him, and we’re at 4!
Like a teenage crisis
During the following three weeks he adopts a sort of silent contact, i.e. puts whatsapp status for me, he changes his telegram profile every day, in short, he seems to be suffering from a return to adolescence.
With an apology he asks to see me again but he still doesn’t have clear ideas. He needs more time because this time the relationship has to take a completely different turn and he doesn’t want to make me suffer anymore. I tell him that breaks, historically, have never been of any use… then the break between two people who live 100 km apart is meaningless, but he needs it and doesn’t listen to reason.
Hopes dashed
In mid-June he leaves for Sicily for a sailing course which will end in Malta. She always makes herself heard, she calls me practically every day. See you at the end of June because she comes by boat with some friends in my area, we get engaged in front of them but then yet another discussion. The story never seems to recover. Early July she texts me in which she says “I just wish I was better equipped, settled and ready to match as much as I get from your love. Now my only goal.”
It seems to me that there is still hope for us, after all.
That weekend I entered his fcb profile (I specify that we are not friends there because I use social networks little and I have never been interested in these things) and among the likes of Sicily, there is one that attracts my attention. The profile of a woman is a boat that I know well because M. sent me that photo when she was in Sicily.
A suspicious photo
In short, I find identical photos of Sicily in the profile of both. No photos of Malta, nor of other people. I am devastated. I write him messages with lots of screenshots that he reads almost immediately but doesn’t respond. I block all contacts in the afternoon. On Monday I get an email in which he offends me for daring to write such mean words to him… in the end we talk and he denies everything. He says that Tipa is part of the same association, that they were a group and so on.
I have no hard evidence and the doubt begins to creep into me and with it I open myself up to the possibility that he, Poor thing, still thinks only of me.
We talk a little more frequently, my birthday arrives and he wishes me a happy birthday at midnight, he calls me, he’s super cuddly… and I falter but I prefer not to see him.
He’s in another relationship
Just a few days ago, with the instinct that only we women have, I went to your profile again and made it clear.
She posts a photo titled DETAILS. It is a fragment of her wrapped in a male embrace. Only her arm is seen, not her face. But her way of embracing is all about her, she squeezes her neck almost to choke you, she makes you feel about her. I discover other illuminating photos that I hadn’t noticed before… the two of them in the mountains. There too no face but I don’t need it because I know by heart those trousers, those legs and those shoes that he was so proud of. And the weekend in the resort in Trentino took place precisely on the days when he declared that he wanted to be more resolved in order to reciprocate my love. I don’t have to look for other answers. It’s clear he’s been in a relationship with her… I don’t know how long, but who cares?
Denial of the evidence, typical of Sarratore
Sarratore has done his dirty work. She seduced me, left me, took me back and released me when and how she wanted. Not only that, he denied the evidence as in the best of narcissistic stereotypes and surely would have continued to do so if I showed him those photos, so I decided not to make any further scene and to cut off any kind of contact with him. Total block. M. started calling me repeatedly, even from the office once he realized that the cell phone was no longer usable.
A few days ago I returned from vacation and I landed in his city. He knew it and showed up at the airport. He parked a few hundred meters from me but didn’t come any closer. I took the bus pretending not to see him. Shortly after he wrote me an email saying: this is devastating. I hope it helps you.
At 50 I still don’t know how to defend myself from these men
You know Ester, it helped me… because the awareness of having hurt him a little is comforting. How do you save yourself and protect yourself from these people? Still in my 50s, I haven’t figured it out. I wonder if it makes sense to warn you and warn you… but would you believe me? He could tell her anything about me and totally discredit me and it would only cause me further suffering.
So I thought that the greatest help I can give to other women who find themselves in these situations is to tell my experience.
I hope to read you, thank you for your time.
I hug you.
v.
Esther Viola’s answer
Dear V,
If they served the experiences of others. If only one were able to impose a little evidence: “the calculation of probabilities says spades” and that was enough to discourage. Instead, nah.
Over time I became convinced of the irrelevance of “everything will go wrong”. The truth is that it’s not true, it’s going to go wrong. It’s not for sure. On the contrary. That’s the point.
It is said that the scoundrel does not redeem himself. It is said that he will not leave his wife and children’s cart. It doesn’t mean that someone who has never wanted you doesn’t start being in love. It is said that he does not decide to make a new life. It’s possible. Indeed very possible. Indeed, still. A certain strategic insistence, an attitude that is half Draghi (whatever it takes) and half Mitterand (la force tranquille) gives results. You feel like it.
Indeed love affairs with the Sarratoris you mustn’t let those who have ended badly tell them. From those who gave up due to exhaustion. You have to find the others. The ones that ended well. There are many, but they rarely confess to avoid sentences of stupidity. In the package, in the end, when you win the title in the specialty “making yourself wanted by those who didn’t want you”, you don’t find the article “happiness”, you find a “unfortunately you are stupid” that pops out with the spring, as in cartoon.
They would serve them. They might convince you.
Those good at waiting and hoping, above the ruin of everything.
Those that “is excluded” is one thing, “there is a slight possibility” is another. Unshakable, remaining relentless on desires. The best do that. And the best wouldn’t be the best if they hadn’t taken the finish line by calculating the odds against them, would they? On the contrary: with the world against.
Those who True love never had an easy course. Shakespeare. Powerful motivator for delicate spirits.
Those of the How long does it take? They don’t give a fuck. One year, two years, twenty? If something doesn’t leave your head, it means that it must stay there.
Those that “Victory, as the Japanese say, belongs to those who know how to suffer a quarter of an hour more”, this puts it Proust in search of lost time. And then it will be true.
Those that it is normal for great loves to be difficult. If they were easy, everyone would have them. Too simple a victory cannot be considered a great showdown. Even the Sun Tzu tells you that if you want what you like, you’ll make do and put up with it.
Those who aren’t afraid of the asshole’s momentary frostbite. If there are as many sentences as heads, then there will be as many kinds of love as there are hearts. If it weren’t for the detail that if they love you in their own way it’s good for them, but smiling and saying “fine” then it’s up to you. Enthusiasm for the “best of nothing” must be cut off, or there are endless mourning.
And so here I am. I’ve been one of them. And with what conviction. So that Winning is useless I didn’t dream it, I really saw it in the face.
At the end of pain there are no banners, there’s a message that appears on a phone screen when frankly, now, it’s not that I’m so excited to see you. Numbers you knew by heart become foreign numbers, e the name that seemed to you the most beautiful in the world is any name.
Not wanting to miss for anything in the world the various art show of a man in love with you is a curse that affects everyone. What I advise you to lose is the farce of when all the happiness you imagined becomes: “And now that he wants this?”. The hand on the forehead to hold back a thought that finally came out of the stable, this: you didn’t even like it, and it took you seven years to get there.
You know when Sancho tells Don Quixote there is no such thing as wasted love? Time yes. Time yes.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED