Cplow Esther,
I never thought I’d write to you again after three years. In the meantime I swear that I have learned something, but evidently not very well since in the evening I find myself crying in front of the photos on my cell phone.
The last time I wrote to you because I was still overwhelmed by the presence of a GAS that returned every other day. Well, my greatest achievement of 2023 was to feel absolutely nothing for him anymore. We tried again and it was saving to finally understand that we could never be together again. Now I see him very happy with a girl much more like him and I ask myself “why not me?”. When we finally said goodbye with a pat on the shoulder, there had just been a person there for me too. The protagonist of this story.
Relationships born on a dating app
Met on adating apps, the first time we went out R made me laugh so much that, even though I wanted absolutely nothing, he left me with that thrill of wanting to see him again. In the following months I discovered it to be perfectly in line with me, both in bed and out.
But if I write to you it’s because there is a big “but”.
It takes him eight months to introduce me to his friendsno social shares, never a word about me to anyone, but it doesn’t weigh on me too much. He had been single for six yearsclearly terrified and unable to relate, but I was patient and things got better.
Relationships, when the crisis begins
Until the first crisis. He tries to distance me because “as soon as I finish medical school I will have to choose what to do and I’m in a panic, having a person next to me who I fear disappointing makes me even more anxious”. I don’t move a step, I try to make him think and make him feel safe in the fact that he doesn’t have to see me as a burden but as a support, and everything is back within a few days.
Meanwhile, things are getting serious, we are officially a couple, he is thoughtful, attentive, present “because you give me a peace that I didn’t think I could feel”.
More and more distant
Then he decides to do a three-month experience in his hometown before finishing his specialist course and, the closer the day gets, the worse the situation gets. I see waking up every night with panic attacks, not sleeping, spending the days asking friends for suggestions for competitions but also thinking about giving up everything and completely changing career. A pinball machine with which it is impossible to make a speech because jumps from one topic to another within a second. More and more messed up, cold and distant (even in sex).
Until the “we can’t continue, I feel like a failure with no goals and it’s not fair that I don’t get in touch with you because of this” comes. I’m in a crisis and I have to solve it on my own. In the meantime, go on with your life…but if you can, wait for me.” I collapse telling him that he can’t play nice or bad time if he wanted to be a couple, that I am willing to be by his side as he prefers, but that I would like to be there. He doesn’t listen to reason, he apologizes for making me suffer and leaves crying.
Tomorrow he leaves for three months
Now we are at this point in the story and tomorrow he leaves for these famous three months. A week of no contact that breaks my heart. Not because I would necessarily like to have him back in my bed, but because I saw a fragile person, who I would like to hear from even just to find out how he is or to talk about this and that, to know if he has listened to the podcast we always talked about, to tell him that a friend of ours took over a refuge where we stayed together last year.
I would like to forget it
On the other hand, I would like to forget him, because maybe he will resolve this crisis, but what if in the meantime he was the one who forgot me? What if every problem in life will be addressed in this way?
I miss him terribly and I tell myself that it would be worth the wait, but I’m afraid to do it for nothingmoreover with a biological clock (or social pressure) that takes its toll.
Maybe you see more clearly than me.
With love,
C.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear C.,
you know how to ask the questions:
What if he was the one who forgot me in the meantime? What if every problem in life will be addressed in this way?
Unsolicited nursing work is a noble occupation but you must be ready for ingratitude: feeling better, it is normal for the beneficiary to want to escape and keep all his previous life (including you) away because it reminds him of who he was and how he could return.
If this seems like a cruel reflection to you, it is, take it with you Freud.
Relationships and illusions
Illusions are so tender in poems, but if you try them live you realize that a dream too much you start to bleed. Patience of love is the twenty-year experiment, we’ve all been there. Then you grow up, and you have to deal with other restrictions on courage: there is the patience with the office manager, the patience to save to be able to buy a house, the patience to do a job that wasn’t what you wanted.
How long did you give yourself to be like this, C.? Two months, ten months, the entire future? Will you make it, suspended in all this nothingness? Love asks for time and asks for it with malice, it blackmails with the clock, it goes as far as demanding terrifying pauses of years. I understand that you’ve almost gotten used to defending yourself and not moving, which is a bit like signing peace in exchange for your life.
You’re not his nurse
From what I read, you are very strict and very used to always judging yourself, so you imagine that events – good or bad – will happen dictated by your behavior. Here there is someone who blatantly asks to be saved – and in any case, desperate or not, he fixes his things and has a fairly solid hierarchical scale of priorities – while the other, you, is busy squeezing everything out of yourself possible compassion, diagnosing him with darkness and depressive attitudes.
Bad relationships, learn to get up and walk away
Are you at least a little disappointed for yourself or just empathetic for him? I would insist on disappointment. There is an important advantage in staying among the disappointed: one has quickly learned the art of resignation, getting up and leaving when necessary.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED