Central Reservation (long)
Last weekend D's friend BL came and visited us. He's 35 and has never been (to our knowledge) in a serious long-term relationship. He is just now settling on a career -- well, two careers, winemaking and teaching -- and has spent his youth doing a lot of traveling and drugs. Because I'm a nosy bitch, I was asking him about this lack of a partner, and it seems to have something to do with his parents' divorce, but he claims to have recently turned a corner. He told us about a girl. They had dated briefly almost seven years ago, got reconnected recently, and, to hear him tell it, fell in love. It was one of those classic stories: girl meets boy, girl dates boy, girl and boy break up, girl meets boy again seven years later and realizes that she had never really gotten over him, and boy realizes he had compared every other girl in the intervening seven years to her. Many sparkling conversations, smoldering looks, and obsessive thoughts ensue. Declarations of love are exchanged. It's a dream come true.
Except there's one tiny problem. The girl is engaged to a guy she's been with for five years and is slated to be married in October.
Nonetheless, things had apparently gotten pretty intense between them, although he insisted that they not have sex. Recently she told him that she's having the best sex of her life with her fiance because she is pretending that it is him. Yowzah.
And as things between them began to spin out of control, as new loves often do, she finally said, I need a few weeks without talking to you to figure things out. Now he's waiting to hear whether or not she's going to break off her engagement.
Well, I told him. This all sounds very familiar. I was in your shoes once. And the thing is, she's not going to leave him. Listen to me, I have experience in this area. I have a freaking soundtrack and a movie list for when you want to wallow in it. And what I will share with you from the wisdom of my experience is that it doesn't matter how much she loves you, and it doesn't matter that she will think of you after she is married, maybe for the rest of her life, and wonder how it would have been with you. Just. doesn't. matter. at. all.
Look at it from her perspective: she has a guy who loves her, who has committed to be with her for life. Maybe he doesn't excite her. Maybe you are the one the thought of whom makes her breathless. Maybe you have the best conversations ever, your intellectual connection mingling perfectly with the nascent sexual energy you will never consummate. Maybe he is a nice guy, a tad mousy, but easy to be with. Maybe she feels in her heart that you are her soul mate, not him. Maybe she genuinely loves him, but in a different way, a quieter way, from the way she yearns for you. But none of this matters, because he is there and has been there for five years and you have not. You are a risk and he is not. If she gives up this sure thing to take a chance on you, she is far more likely to end up with nothing.
It's as though, to use a crass and imperfect monetary analogy, she has $50,000 in the bank and is now being offered the chance to cut the cards for $1 million, the catch being that if she loses the bet, she loses the $50,000 as well. Sure, $1 million is tempting, compelling, and opens up worlds of possibility that do not exist for her now. But she worked hard for that $50,000, and the chance of losing it is simply not one she is willing to take -- not even for the promise of a good chance at 20 times that, and even if it is the only $1 million she will ever have the chance at. I use this analogy to illustrate the principle that people are generally risk averse, both when it comes to money and, especially, when it comes to love.
I get that, don't you? I'd take the $50,000 every time. It's the easier, more comfortable choice. What would I do with $1 million anyway? I'd shake my head and click my tongue at anyone who chose to gamble.
So you see, you can't blame her for not choosing you.
And then there is the not-small matter of the investment that other people have made in the relationship she has with her fiance. His parents and family, her parents and family, and all of their friends, who, after five years, have no doubt become so intermingled that it's hard to tell whose are whose anymore. Not to mention their physical belongings, which are just as commingled. They probably didn't put their names in all their books when they moved in together, you see, and you know how hard it is to remember whether that copy of Leaves of Grass was given to him by an old girlfriend or to her by an old boyfriend, but surely it was precious to someone once . . . And who would get the cat? The dishes? The stereo?
It would be complicated and exhausting. You can't blame her for not wanting to go there.
Moreover, the wedding plans have been made. A date has been set, rings have been purchased, the band has been paid a deposit, cakes, flowers, dresses, all of these things have been paid for or at least chosen. Plane tickets have been purchased. People have made plans to join in the revelling. Backing out of this thing now would disappoint a lot more people than just the fiance. People who have invested not just money, but their energy and goodwill in this relationship. And despite the 50% divorce rate, people still do invest emotionally in relationships that have gone public. I mean, everyone loves a wedding. It somehow confers a sense of rightness in the world. That's why it's one of the few remaining acceptable excuses for missing work. And next to a wedding, and the birth of a child, what people love is an engagement. There are rings to be gawked at, gifts to be registered for and bought, showers to be planned . . . it's all part of a very elaborate ritual.
It shakes up people's sense of stability and well-being for an engagement to end, particularly when there is an interloper involved. Your relationship with her, were you to have one, would be taxed from the beginning by the weight of the recriminations from the community. And even if you were to move far away and never see any of the people involved, you would still feel their judgment. Holidays would be uncomfortable where they should be joyous. Memories are long when it comes to this sort of thing. Years later, were you to get that far, you would still be looked upon with suspicion.
So you see, you cannot blame her for not leaving him.
Then too, of course, there is the small matter of her not wanting to hurt him. He has been good to her, and he is a good person. He cannot help it that he is not you. He has invested five years of his life and his whole heart in her, accepting all her flaws and limitations, all the ones that you, in the throes of new love, probably don't even know about yet. How is she to know now whether you could accept her whole self as he does? That is a beautiful thing, you know, and it feels (whether or not it actually is) very rare. He has given himself without reservation, and she repays him by falling in love with another just a few months before their wedding?
You see, of course, that it would be lunacy for her to leave him. The truth is that it takes a lot to break up a marriage. Unless the fiance/spouse is causing the wanderer serious unhappiness, there just isn't enough justification for making such a dramatic change in the course of one's life. That's why it happens so rarely.
None of this means, of course, that the connection between you isn't real, that it isn't the most core-shaking thing that will ever happen to either one of you, that it isn't really love. None of this means that in a parallel universe you could not have had a beautiful life together (or that you could not have crashed and burned in a few months, but let's focus on the positive here). None of this means that for the rest of your life, certain songs won't trigger a memory of her so intense it will seem like the whole thing just happened yesterday. None of this means that you will not go to your graves having always been haunted by the memories and the eternal question -- what might have been?
But you will go on, both of you, and you will live good lives, sweet lives. You will love another, and you will make a life with her, and it will be a happy life, one that you, like your engaged paramour, would not give up to take a chance on something else.
You cannot know any of this right now, so I am sharing it with you because, dear friend, I have been there. I can assure you of this: One day when you have your sweet life -- and you will -- you will understand the situation in which she now finds herself, and why there can only be one outcome, the one you know is most likely but nonetheless hope you will miraculously be spared. And you will nod your head knowingly, secure in the knowledge that she chose wisely -- indeed, that there was no real choice to do otherwise.
But, if you are anything like me, you will always wonder whether she still thinks of you, whether the quiet joy of a happy home has stilled her desire for you, whether (after time has dulled the vibrancy of your recollection of the lines of her face and body) it all really happened the way it felt to you, whether all the things she said were truly meant. She may haunt your dreams, making you feel like a traitor to the beautiful life you have made once she left it. If you meet again one day, and everyone has had a bit too much to drink, you may see in her eyes that nothing of what she felt for you has changed, and she may see the same in yours.
I can offer you no solution for these things. I can only tell you that they are so, and that there is nothing to be done but to grieve this loss, cherish the memories of the brief time you had together, and put one foot in front of the other and move forward into the rest of your life. You may wish it were otherwise, but I have come to believe (as I must, and as you will) that it's better this way.
