Cplow Esther,
I’m E., I’m 30 years old and I’ve been living away from home for work for a few years. In the city where I live I met M., 31 years old, a apparently perfect manwith whom I had one relationship lasted two and a half years and with whom I had done many life plans together including marriage, with a date already established.
Last Christmas, after a month that they lived in two different cities (he returned to his house where I was supposed to join him soon) but we were an hour apart, while we were discussing on the phone the trip we were supposed to take (and which would also be his gift) for my thirtieth birthday, following a misunderstanding decided to don’t answer my calls anymore and even to don’t see my messages anymore. Gripped by desperation I went to his house where he couldn’t be found.
He disappears and then comes back
For about a month I didn’t hear from him, the messages went unseen for a long time and the calls went unanswered. My Christmas was obviously a Christmas spent crying. In the meantime I have decided to embark on a journey of psychotherapy and in mid-January, when he decides to talk to me again he does so by coming with me to the session where the therapist offers us couples therapy.
Change your mind again
End result: on my 30th birthday he lets me know about not wanting to take this path with me, even though I am a person with whom he gets along well, with whom there is sexual understanding and with whom he spends time together pleasantly. There’s no point in telling you about my anguish. I go on my way, between the desperation and a sense of inadequacy and in the meantime I often ask him to meet again since he is incapable of telling me what I would like to hear: an apology for his month of silence and that love is over.
Instead what he manages to tell me is that he is unable to predict the future and therefore does not know if one day we will get back together. This fuels one in me hope. Last week, after they passed six months after our separation, we saw each other again, we went to dinner together and to the cinema, we had a good time, we didn’t talk about us from the past and instead there were constant jokes about us in the future, plans about what we would do, trips etc.
It still disappears, why?
At the moment when we were closest, when there was contact with caresses and we were about to kiss, he took his leave, saying that it was late and leaving me petrified and without even having time to realize what was happening. he is gone. I texted him to see if he had arrived home and what happened is the same thing that happened in December. Messages not displayed. Zero traces of him. All this despite knowing how bad that behavior had made me feel.
Why? I am aware that many women in my place would have given up on the first one not displayed but the love I feel towards him prevents me from being rational.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear E.,
We know them, these subjects. Lately they have multiplied so much that they seem to be the only type of fish in the sea. Do you want to go see Barbie and get excited about the feminist meta-messages, which empowerment you want to do, we delude ourselves. They have specialized, they act like viruses, they debilitate the femalethere is no hope against this new passive patriarchy, with a Cold War flavor.
Those who are interested, “how much” depends who knows, on how they get up. Those who are fine with you, on an equal footing with another. Those who have their ex on the pedestal and tell you every five minutes, it’s unclear with what use (To hear “call her back”?).
Those with difficult childhoods were hurt as children, the damage is now done, we need a permanent red cross, they demand understanding for every wickedness. Those who, because of mum and dad, now have to maintain their insensitive pose. Those who are really insensitive, and some devoted little lamb girl stands right there, taking blows, and doesn’t move.
Those who write, and then rewrite, and all you find after months are kilometers of chats. You drown in those chats.
The ones who see you as a friend. Those who, since time has passed, improve you
the credit: you are a little more than a friend. Those with girlfriends at home who swear there’s nothing left, but they don’t leave her, so they have two happy and stupid ones.
The ones who just won’t kick you out of bed. Those who are “better at your house”, because their house is already occupied. And you even prepare dinner for him. Those that “yes” and “no” are basically similar words. Those who exaggerate, to dramatize like this. Those who are too weak, never a bit of carrion.
“The more trivial defects they have, the more they make you angry,” he writes Philip Roth.
Does it disappear? Let’s hope!
The only certain thing about these wrecks is that they come back. They always come back. From you and all the others. And you say: why is he coming back? Because leaving and taking is fun, when you don’t care much, because life is mostly boring, because they have nothing better to do. Do they disappear? Let’s hope. Never has there been a number destined to never appear on the telephone again.
So What will the lover (you) do when cornered and with no way out? He will wait, pretending not to. If I had to choose one characteristic of love, it would be that: availability for boundless expectations. The prerogative of every power: to give the impression that it is worth the wait.
I’m not telling you to stop, you don’t stop because I tell you to. Just give yourself one rule, and that is to get it clear in your head that there is suffering, waiting for the miracle and doing something during it.
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