CDear Ester, here I am, I’m here – I’m the letter you were perhaps waiting for. I am the repository of everything you have been writing in this column for years, I don’t want it to come across as presumptuous, but I have been reading you since you wrote on the Corriere del Mezzogiorno and my time has come. I have 30 yearsI live in Milan and I’m in one relationship for almost 4 yearsof which the last two were about living with the boy I’ve been in love with since I was 20.
It was my GAS in my twenties: sleepless nights, existential questions of why he doesn’t call, maybe he doesn’t like me enough and all this bullshit. I’m madly in love. Not him.
I lived the first two years of the relationship with this imbalance, then I suddenly woke up and realized that it wasn’t the case to continue like this. I put a new gear in. In the last two years the relationship continues at a new pace, until the last six months when we arrive at step 3.
1. we like each other
2. we are together
3. How come it’s not like it was at the beginning?
And now? For him the relationship must always be alive, passionate, sparkling. Not for me, I agree with dying of boredom and calling each other from the supermarket. So I wonder what happens now? What’s next? What makes you still resist?
Bad relationships: I questioned everything
I ask myself this because I have questioned everything about my life in the last year, starting from the professional field in which I changed jobs and roles. Here, the regrets as you say, if they serve to save someone from their twenties, I too shout it out loud: they are all here about my professional future, I should have thought about it better and with more attention rather than losing my mind after men . I’m tired Ester, but I don’t know if I’m ready to start over even in the sentimental sphere. I was happy like that.
Thank you with all my heart
One of your faithful readers
TO.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear A.,
The heart stakes fared better than twenty years ago. Here it is increasingly difficult, in the philosophy area, how dare I say something. But what would I have to say then.
You will have already seen and experienced how arrogant people tend to pull the most delicate spirits like a magnet. I read it recently, I don’t remember where: being bad is difficult but it pays, and since then I haven’t found peace.
Love, as we mean beautiful love, you’ve seen it, it’s a question of being young and very young. Not that you can no longer fall in love at those voltages, but an average intelligent person will end up becoming prudent and avoiding unnecessary relapses. You look for similarities in candidates, signs of trust, signs of good faith. In short, proof that you didn’t chase the first idiot who passed by.
Relationships, you need strength to make them work
For that other type of love, the one that happens when Cupid still has all his feathers, strength is needed, many strengths, not just metaphorical strengths. Strength to take risks, strength to not sleep, strength to suffer. Strength to wait – and who can forget those.
Experience is when you know how what can turn out. You already see, you already predict. So you let it go, and letting it go is an art. It takes effort not to start hoping.
You are also sitting on the side of reason, I don’t forget that.
You resign yourself to making it easy as soon as you understand that there is nothing difficult: there are those who will not leave their wives, those who have work as their first interest and frankly love who cares, those who want ten girls for me up to the age of carer, those who prefer foreigners, those who don’t even know it.
Now the relationships have evolved into cryptic discomfort
The thousandth postponement ad “High fedelity”. These major systems that you and I are stroking about are now all in a novel. A novel that made an impression and made a name for itself in the nineties, now the relationships have evolved into cryptic inconveniences and therefore something else is in fashion.
“I have never had a wild crush on Laura, and at the beginning this made me think about the possibilities of a long-term future: I had always thought – and given how it ended, perhaps I still think so now – that every relationship needs that kind of tremendous push that the crush represents, is essential to get you going and get you through the first climbs. Then, when the energy from that first push runs out and you begin to slow down and almost stop, then you need to look around and see what you have achieved. Maybe something completely different from what was there at the beginning, or it’s more or less the same, but more delicate and calmer, or you just end up with a handful of flies in your hands. With Laura, I changed my mind about it for a while. There were no sleepless nights, sudden loss of appetite, or agonizing waits for the phone to ring, neither for her nor for me. We got together almost casually, and because there was no special energy to expend, we never had to look around to see what we had gotten, because it was just what we had always had. Laura didn’t make me fall into unhappiness, anxiety, or discomfort.”.
You need a decent collection of frustrations
Everyone knows the story. They break up, then get back together. It ends like this:
“I’m starting to get used to the idea that Laura could be the person I’ll spend the rest of my life with, I think (or at least I’m starting to get used to the idea that I’m so unhappy without her that there’s no point in thinking of an alternative ). But it’s much harder to get used to the idea that my youthful idea of love, based on negligés and dinners at home by candlelight and long, ardent glances, has no basis in real life.”
And then stop depending
There’s no time, but I should ask you what this means:
And now? For him the relationship must always be alive, passionate, sparkling. Not for me, I agree with dying of boredom and calling each other from the supermarket.
So I wonder what happens now? What’s next? What makes you still resist?
What are you asking? What are you finding? Do you say “let’s break up” or is it a vague (and very stupid) complaint?
What I’m saying, A., is that it takes a fair collection of frustrations to graduate, after which existence becomes less impractical. I understand feeling tired. And then stop depending. Stop thinking that everything depends on you in relationships. It is unforgivable to let only love count. Entrusting every possibility to what a person who is not us will or will not do.
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