chi dear Esther. I’m M. I’m 36 years old and have an apparently perfect life: a job that I love and gratify me, I’m a cheerful and self-confident person, who gets along with most of the people he meets, who always tries to help others. I am very empathic, I have many passions and I am full of life.
Thirteen years ago, I met G., a thirty-five year old single who made me lose my mind and who used an exhausting love bombing between poems, songs and sentences full of drama, but never applied too much to practice. super jealous, verbally aggressive, grumpy, moody, but sympathetic and kind to the outside world. I’ve been trying to get over him with a PAQ, who came into my life after I was done with him, but I couldn’t. Indeed, nine years ago we got married and had two wonderful children. It’s a pity, however, that he remained the same and the almost twelve years of difference, despite the fact that I’ve always been a very mature person, didn’t help us to live peacefully.
We’ve had countless fights over the years, our story did not flow and does not flow peacefully, I feel imprisoned, I don’t feel free to be myself, so much so that I have also abandoned some passions… to be honest, above all to be able to share as much time as possible with my family. As a working mom, time always seems short to me. The truth is, I don’t feel loved and, in retrospect, I guess I never was. I’m always clear, I’ve always said what made me suffer (denigration, bullying) but nothing has ever changed, so much so that I even offered him a couple’s therapy to which he never wanted to “bend”.
Two and a half years ago, I met my GAS, A., A colleague of mine and my husband’s splendid age. Married, with two children, according to him in constant crisis with his wifeand has been with since high school and having a few extramarital affairs over the years. We began to see each other, always in the workplace, between a coffee and an intimate confidence and we bonded a lot.
A. has always been clear “I’m not old enough to fall in love, I’m not the person who can love you, I don’t want to abandon everyday life with my children”. “After a year, we kissed and continued to do so often. He obviously would have wanted something more and I, who have always been a bigot (never cheating, never parallel stories, never one night stands), I truly believed I could have an extramarital affair with him, just to keep him close to me, just to have a “moment of peace” as I call it. But no, a year and a half has passed since our first kiss, and there have been millions more, fleeting, lasting a few seconds, in the office, in the elevator, between one coffee and another. I have promptly refused his requests to meet to spend time together. A. doesn’t understand, he asks me “how do we understand what’s really there? Thus, without making love”. “I do not know”. I answer. “You are important to me and that’s it. I would have wanted more.”
But you know dear Esther, the truth is that I don’t want to run away with him and start a new life, I wouldn’t have the courage. I just wish I had the courage to live through this thing, and then close it and move on with my family. But I can’t. I’m stuck in this limbo, which torments me. In this time “together”, I have always tried to close with him, most recently yesterday, when I told him that despite having told him that I was ready to have a relationship with him, I prefer to close it. And not because I don’t like him enough, but just because I don’t like his attitude towards me. I feel treated like a passerby. I smile as I say it, because I know very well that it is like this and I must say that he has always been consistent with what he told me. Never too involved, never too loving. In fact, he did practically nothing to make me fall in love with him but it happened anyway. Before closing with him, I tried to do it with G., but he doesn’t want to hear about it: he says we have to try again because all in all we work and because we have two small children who need united parents. And I understand it, I also think that “Peppe for Peppe, I’m keeping my Peppe”.
Seen Esther? I’ve reached the end of the letter and I have no questions to ask. I would just like to live with a little more lightness and wake up from the dream in which A’s kisses made me feel loved.
Much love. m.
Dear M,
The couple, feathering in the wind.
Let’s do an experiment: brevity. Both I understood and you understood, what do we talk about if we understand each other well.
I start with Pavese:
But where will we end up, E.? Is there anything more absurd than love? If we enjoy it to the last, we immediately get tired of it, disgusted; if we hold it up to remember it without remorse, one day we will regret our foolishness and cowardice of not having dared. Love only asks to become a habit, a life in common, one flesh of two, and as soon as it is such, it is dead. Thinking about it makes you crazy. It’s useless, love is life and life doesn’t want reasoning.
And I end with Pavese:
And now that I’ve finished I can see clearly that there is no answer to this letter except insolence or ass-kicking. But even in this there would be no escape. As a child, the more I took them, the more I became stubborn.
C. Pavese. Life through letters. Einaudi
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