Cplow Esther,
before there was a long story, 14 years, which ended badly. But now, as you say, I got sick again and so I recovered from the old one thanks to D.
One evening, about a year after the end of the story of life, I meet this boy. He is from the same country as me but lives in the city where I work. He asks me for my number, memorizes it because his cell phone is turned off and invites me on a first date between lunch and a museum. The kiss takes place. And for a mental and brainy person like me it is absurd to feel attracted to a stranger who it seems like I’ve known forever.
Butterflies at 36 years old
We start hanging out: cinema, dinners at home, Netflix evenings. Me feeling butterflies at 36: a miracle. A thousand common passions and interests, he is very nice and present. And then he starts to brake.
Due to a bad event in the family, which occurred shortly before we met, he decides to move back near his parents. However, we continue to hang out in the months before the move, but he always sets constraints and limits: seeing and hearing each other, but not too much. Because talking to each other every day or seeing each other often would mean having a relationship.
He says he doesn’t have a mind for a story, but that he likes me and that he wants to live from day to day. He’s always looking for me. I have learned not to give up a part of myself anymore.
The push and pull of distances
After a coexistence full of guarantees, marriage plans and fake “I love yous”, I said to myself: let’s try. There are no certainties in life.
Months pass. He likes me, he sometimes thinks of me, if he wants to go to the cinema or an exhibition he would like to do it with me. He says I’m important and that he would hate to end this… thing between us.
After I left, because the situation was too intermittent, he looked for me.
If I retreat, he comes closer. If I take a step forward, he retreats. When he comes back here on weekends he texts me to see me; I’ll see you when I go back down to my parents’ house. He alternates weekends in which he is present and affectionate with sudden disappearances, because – he says – he has to “put his distance back” and has let himself go too much.
The limbo that I can’t love
I’m involved. I would like a normal, assiduous relationship, to understand if something truly beautiful could arise between us. He only admitted that he was being held back: one step forward and two steps back.
He told me that he would never want me to leave his life, but that maybe it would happen and he would understand. That is to say?
He is of the “let’s see each other” party, even in an extemporaneous way. He says they actually program couples. He writes little, but he looks for me to really see me.
It made me discover new sides of myself at 36 years old. It made me stop waking up thinking about how hurt I felt. But now?
I’ve never loved limbo. I’m not made for bed friendships and I don’t think my brain leaves it indifferent. He calls me “brain-damaged”.
I already know that if I disappeared again, he would look for me. But I don’t want to do either/or.
Maybe I’m attracted to him because, after deep scars, I’m not really ready yet. But in reality I’m already running the risk of hurting myself again.
What to do?
G.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear G.,
Nobody really knows how to flirt with love. No one can give definitive opinions. And after all, no one really does it, because even before the age of dates we understand that there are no unique models or reliable predictions.
However, there is a mild recursion of events.
The unwritten rules of complicated loves
These, for example:
with unrequited love you mostly lose years;
those who are undecided about flat relationships are rarely convinced;
certain broken relationships are difficult to straighten;
and those who live a long career as a lover often remain where they are.
Naturally, this sacred quatern also knows sensational exceptions.
Love is that place where anything can happen, but mostly nothing happens.
There are people made for tormented loves
What I do know, however, concerns the characters. For some loves you have to cut yourself off.
The Rubber Bones
There are people who are very suitable for extreme love. They are the ones with the Rubber Bones. They have the physique for everything: for great expectations, for flirting, for sleepless nights, for betrayals, for messages that don’t arrive, for ferocious clashes. They are the ones capable of arguing like crazy and then returning to normal without running out of strength.
The OdGs manage to remain standing even when the sentimental wall collapses. They continue to live: they work, they go out, they see people, they wait for them to pass. And it usually passes in a reasonable amount of time. Put bluntly: they know how to take slaps.
The Crystal Bones
Then there are the Crystal Bones. Hypersensitivity doesn’t help. They are people who have already emerged battered from the first smashings. They have lost energy along the way, they are more fragile, more afraid.
And every new malfunctioning love always seems like a unique case, an unprecedented disaster. So they sit there: waiting or defending themselves. Both two terrible strategies, because they lead nowhere. To them it passes in an unreasonable time. And the risk is that of wasting years chasing stupid loves.
We are not all made for the same love
What one understands too late is that certain types of love require precise forces.
And if you don’t have them, you can’t invent them. If in sentimental disasters there was a margin of possession of mental faculties, we could make a diagnosis and choose.
Do I have Crystal Bones? Good: then love by reflection is better.
How perfect everything would be, huh?
