Unrequited Love Blog

Last night I had a dream about Jessica.  It was like we were all in high school, only I was either a late arrival or more like a graduate student or teacher’s aide or something.  A bit on the outside.  Anyway, Jessica was there, and she was so attractive, I felt such longing for her.  But she had a longterm boyfriend.  Jessica (and her friends) knew I was in love with her.  Jessica felt flattered but removed, and didn’t know what to do with my feelings.  She told her friends something like “yes, I know she’s interested but I’m with John.”  I felt so sad and bereft.

Dreams are often the way that inconvenient or inappropriate sexual attractions first announce themselves to me.  Like, if I develop sexual feelings toward a patient I won’t know it until I have a sexual dream about them, or when I fell in love with a close friend of mine.

My love for Jessica first announced itself in a dream, as well.  It was shortly after the end of the semester, just after I received the first email from her.  I really wasn’t all that conscious of my feelings or what was going on with me.  I felt viscerally pleased when I read the email, and flattered, but that was about all I was aware of.  I shared the email with my Spouse.  That night I had a dream that somehow I was giving her a ride home in my car, and it became clear to me that she was sexually interested in me, sort of curious or intrigued about being with a woman.  She said something like “I’m curious about how sex with a woman works,” and I said something like “Yes, I got that, I thought that you were.”  And we were getting along really well, enjoying each other’s company.  We went to my home, to a sort of a sunken living room/bedroom area.  Suddenly we were in pajamas on the bed and unsure how to start things.  I was feeling I’m not sure if this is going to work or not.  She was sort of laying on her stomach, and I was on the bed behind her, and I just bent down and kissed the back of her neck.  She moaned, and I felt my anxiety melt into tentative sexual arousal.  She turned over, I kissed her, and suddenly whether things were going to work or not was not an issue, I knew sex was going to work fine between us, be good, and I felt much more strongly and confidently sexual.  But then my Spouse’s mother walked into the room, and say Hi or something, and interrupted us.  Suddenly, Jessica was not there anymore, and my Spouse walked into the room.  A saw a sort of mannequin of Jessica in another room, later, and felt sad and empty.  She wasn’t real or alive to me anymore.  I felt annoyed with my Spouse’s mother for her intrusion, and very sad at losing Jessica.

The next afternoon I told my Spouse “I was so god-damn grateful that student Jessica wrote me a nice email that I had a sexual dream about her.”  Spouse laughed.  I swear I still wasn’t fully getting that I had fallen in love, or even that I was so strongly interested in Jessica.

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[...natter, natter...]

…I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.  Probably at some point, it’s not that big of a town.  How will I feel?  How will she feel?  Will she be nice to me and I’ll feel nervous and condescended to?  I wonder how her life is going, how her career is going…Is she pregnant yet?  Is she happy?  Will she seem more “grown up” to me?  Has she thought of me at all?  I still think about her way too often.  Why why why?  I”m such an idiot.  Why did I become so obvious with my attraction?  Why did I fall in love with her?  Why won’t she love me back?  Was she even tempted?  Is her husband an asshole?  Probably not, but he is probably not as bright (as her, as me).  Does he earn a lot of money?  Fuck him.  I hate him.  Why can’t she be attracted to me?  Why can’t I be talking to her, learning about her thoughts and feelings, living with her?  I wonder if the sex they have is good…Maybe he sucks.  But probably not.  Maybe she wants to fuck him in the ass, and he doesn’t really want to, but he does it to please her.  And then he really doesn’t like it, and hates being submissive, but she really likes it, and makes him do it often!  Haha!  Why, why, why was I such an idiot around her in that last class?  So embarrassed… ….Why can’t I get what I want for once?  How come she doesn’t see me as attractive?    She’s moving on with her life and has forgotten all about me, and I’m pathetically still focused on her…Shit, shit, shit…

[...natter, natter...]

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The post title is a reference to the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, where the film follows two separate plot lines for the same life, depending on whether Gwyneth makes a train or the door slides shut in front of her.  I’ve been thinking on and off about what it might have been like for Jessica to have been with me rather than her husband.  Now I know she wasn’t interested and it was never going to happen, but if we could all just agree to suspend our disbelief for a while, here we go…

I think about her being Catholic, how she would never have been able to have the wedding she may have dreamt about since she was a child.  I wonder if her faith combined with being in a same-sex relationship would have been a struggle for her, for her parents and siblings, for her extended community.  That kind of thing can be very subtle, people (especially Catholics, in my opinion) can be very capable of lovingly accepting homosexuality in others but never in themselves or close loved ones, it would be felt to be a compromise.  If she had been with me, would I have been taking her away from her community in a subtle but devastating way?

I will never make the kind of money most well-educated men seem to make.  I seem to top out at around $70K.  In my area, it’s lower middle-class liveable, nothing more.  I would not have been able to offer a large house in the suburbs, expensive vacations, a certain level of comfortable respectability, or stay-at-home motherhood.

This is really what has been on my mind, more fundamentally.  How could I consider taking children away from her?  Sure, children can be adopted or test-tubed, but they would not be our children.  And I don’t think we could afford for her to stay home with them.  More importantly, they (Jessica and any children) would not be wrapped in the warmth of heterosexual privilege, of unquestioned approval and support, all those subtle messages saying they are doing the right thing, socially and spiritually.  With me, would she be lonely, unhappy, feel vulnerable?  At some deep level feel the life she had was somehow less than? I mean, I’m pretty sure she wants kids, and how could I possibly deny her that, in its fullest form?  I have a picture of the child of my Spouse’s friend, the baby happens to have Jessica’s hair color and eye color.  He is such a beautiful child, how could I even think of taking such a child away from Jessica?

I know I gravitate toward biological explanations for social behavior, I know this about myself.  I can’t help but feel that people are supposed to pair-bond, to mate and make babies together, to create a family.  That the family is the place from which we intertwine with the world, and the place from which we defend against it.  And I wouldn’t want Jessica to have anything less than this Eden-before-the-fall, this enduring fable.

The life I could have offered her may not have been the life she deserved.  I wouldn’t want her to have to compromise her faith, or question its integrity.  I wouldn’t want her to have to struggle for money or feel she had to leave her child in the care of well-meaning strangers.  I wouldn’t want her and her child to ever feel they didn’t belong.

*Door slides shut, she’s gone.*

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It occurs to me that there is no such thing as second place, or even a consolation prize, in love — you either win or you lose.  Even if you develop or maintain a friendship, unless you fall completely out of love with the person, friendship surely does not fill the space in your soul that Love had tenderly and hopefully created.

I have fantasies of friendship with Jessica, but there is always something else going on in the relationship.  The fantasy tends to run like we’re friends but she’s unhappy or unfulfilled in her marriage and slowly falls in love with me.  There is unremarked sexual tension, lots of sunlight, she likes my huge protective dog (which is a love-worthy feat all on its own, believe me), she hangs out in my condo a lot (nice, clean condo with dishwasher and attractive decor for those who have been reading this blog earlier), we talk a lot and get to know each other.

Sometimes the fantasy ends with Jessica being unwilling or unable to leave her husband, and I’m miserable.  Or she does leave and it’s a huge drama with hurt feelings (husband, parents) and anger (parents).  Either way, I either win or lose, but no consolation prize, I can’t maintain a consolation prize fantasy.

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Christ,  I am horny.  I just went online to craigslist looking for easy sex, with a man cause they are so much easier than women, and I started emailing back from an address that revealed my name, because I was in such a hurry to get laid. 

Spouse is refusing to let me out of marriage right now.  She wants me to support her through school, another year or so.  I don’t think I can make it!  She said I could have sex with others, since we are not married anymore, but then I am supposed to financially support her?  WTF!?  I think I must be retaliating.  Saga of a bad marriage.  Saga of a less-than-fully-conscious deprived romantic.

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