Unrequited Love Blog

I’ve been thinking of putting another post on this blog for a while, a sort of update on what’s been going on and how I’ve been feeling since July 2009, about a year ago when I made the “final” entry on the blog.

So, what’s changed? Well, for one thing I feel like more of an idiot.  I believe I was in love with Jessica, but I now take that set of feelings less seriously or less intensely.   The whole thing feels much more like something that happened to me in the past, and not something that is currently happening to me.  When I think about Jessica now, it’s the memory of love that I feel, rather than the experience of being in love.   And I was in love with her, but did not know her enough to love her.  I might have been able to love her, I certainly wanted to love her, but I didn’t have the opportunity to really love her.

Unrequited Love.  It’s just a bizarre, bizarre set of feelings.  Being in love feels like having a fever dream, during the most intense part of it everything seems much more vivid, colors more intense, feelings more acute, yet everything has a sense of unreality or surrealism to it at the same time.  I had vivid, intense, intrusive images and thoughts, almost like a PTSD reaction, but positive rather than negative in emotional tone.  My head was preoccupied with a ceaseless whirlwind of thoughts about Jessica all the time.  During the height of love’s intensity I felt love for many people around me, for strangers, for the world — it all spilled over from being in love.  But there was also a sharp edge of pain, of disappointment, that would rise up unexpectedly.  All the feelings just sort of rushed up in me and out of me, like I was picked up by a giant, invisible whirlwind, possessed by a djinn, then deposited on the side of road exhausted, depleted, and left with a lingering sense of grief.

Whatever this blog and the associated website say about me, they say.  If I seem obsessive, immature, pathetic, socially awkward or “off,” so be it.  I can’t take the whole blog back, and I really don’t want to.   I mean, I don’t really want to be perceived in those ways, it’s embarrassing, sometimes humiliating and shameful; but this blog IS a personal truth of mine, it’s pretty honest.  So if that’s who I am, it’s who I am.

I truly regret causing Jessica any discomfort, or creating any awkwardness between us, as we are bound to meet casually at some future point.  I truly regret making my feelings or attraction clear to her at all, it must have been weird and uncomfortable.  Most students don’t want professors to seem out of control around them , or seem overly vulnerable.  Students want to be able to rely on professors to set boundaries.  I regret asking her to deal with my feelings in any way, even though it was (I thought) relatively subtle and indirect.  But I also think that I must have wanted her to know, on some level.  I was so classically obvious in the last class — dilated pupils, stuttering, nervous, confused, agitated, weak in the knees — who wouldn’t see this as a declaration or at least display of love?  It seems my unconscious just took the choice away from me and showed my love despite my best intentions.  I don’t know why it happened to me, but it did feel out of my (conscious) control.  I don’t know why I would do this to myself — fall in love with a straight, engaged/married former student and drive myself crazy.  I mean, I know I did do it to myself on some level, and I don’t know why I felt the need to be so punishing.  Perhaps I needed to punish myself for seeking a divorce.  Or maybe I needed to fall in love with someone who I could love without taking any action, so I could try out whether I really wanted to end my marriage or not.

Regarding my divorce and life in general, I just feel overwhelmed — more than half my life is over and it’s not where I want it to be.  I wonder if I’m too old to try and start over, if I’m being (unbeknownst to myself) ridiculous in thinking I can date women in their 30s without looking, well, ridiculous.  I’m very overwhelmed with thinking of selling the house and moving out.  The market is terrible, I don’t want to lose money, but I don’t want to keep living there.  I’m painfully aware of every second I lose not being out dating, moving back to the city, crafting a new life.  Yet I believe I need to be in the best financial position possible to start dating.  Also, I can tell Spouse is hoping the split won’t happen, that I’ll change my mind, she says as much.  So, I’m being emotionally irresponsible by continuing to stay and/or not making clear and rapid moves toward changing the relationship.  And, still, am I making a bad decision?  I’m in a relationship where I’m loved, and I love Spouse in return — what more can I expect to find?  My continued decision to divorce is, at this point, based on feeling I simply cannot live with Spouse’s messiness, cannot live with her lack of motivation, feeling we don’t have enough common interests such as outdoor recreation or going out in general, and it would be nice to be in romantic love with someone who loved me back the same way.

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I have really thin skin today.  I keep calling myself an idiot about the whole thing with Jessica, and generally feeling like a socially awkward, well, idiot. It’s funny how this cycle of self-criticism:realistic analysis:overinflated hopeful evaluation:self-criticism keeps looping around and around.  The intensity levels may vary a bit, bit it’s essentially the same stuff.

Today, a self-critical thin-skinned day, I realize how geeky I tend to come across, and I wish I were smoother.  I want better clothes, more money, more youth, more chances to start over again.  Have you seen the movie “Adaptation” with Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep?  Charlie Kaufman is such a good writer, poignant and universal.  Toward the end of the movie, after the orchid hunter is killed, Meryl Streep’s character cries, eventually saying “I want to be a baby again, I want to start over, I want to do the whole thing over, I want to be a baby again.”  That’s kind of how I feel today.  Maybe this is tied to my feelings about my mother, and my associations between feelings about Jessica and feelings about my mother (see “Later in September Month 16″).

Also in this movie, Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother Donald are talking, Charlie is telling Donald that Donald was laughed at by the girl he was in love with in high school.  Donald (the life-affirming, out-going twin) says yes, he knew that, he heard her talking about him as he walked away.  But it was his love, and no one was going to take it away from him, not even the girl he was in love with.  I also feel like this at times.  It’s my love, even if I’m the only one who feels it or even sees it as legitimate or “real” or…I don’t know…noble or something, the kinds of things love should be.  Hmmm, maybe I’ll write a film review of Adaptation for the website.

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I’ve been reading back over my own blog, trying to get a sense of how I felt over time, as well as how I come across on the blog.  One thing that occurs to me is how incredibly cliche I am for falling for a younger student when I’m just pushing middle-aged.  Also, how incredibly cliche (or typical, to be kinder) I am in my general reactions — jealous, possessive, obsessive, writing bad poetry (see “Unrequited” on Musings page of website), insecure, self-critical.  Really, I’m not usually so neurotic.  It’s love that has made me neurotic !   Or, the unrequited variety of love, at least.

I’m typically not a poetry writer.  But this is often something people do when in love — write poetry or love notes even if they have never done so before.  It’s so embarrassingly adolescent.  The whole website/blog thing is a little embarrassingly adolescent.  But it’s been helpful, nonetheless, to be able to express some of this stuff.  Anonymously.  Thank God.

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This may be a bad decision. As my divorce becomes more real, I’m more afraid I will regret it. That I’m being childish, selfish, fantastical, and trying to act way too young for my age. Not sure what to do about this. I try to think, if I were my own patient, what would I recommend or how would I see myself? It’s hard to get outside of yourself, but I think I would see myself as perhaps a bit unrealistic regarding relationships, but also that I am in a not-so-good marriage and I could probably feel happier with someone else.

The more you talk about something, the more real it gets, the more committed you become to that course of action. I can feel this happening to me with my divorce, I just hope it won’t be an “oops” situation.

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My Spouse is busy telling me she thinks I need to grow up.  That I want this grand passionate love that is essentially a child’s fantasy, the fantasy of an innocent.  She says my innocence is a large part of what she loves about me, and what will ultimately break us apart.

Spouse clearly comes down on the side of stable, companionate love where de-stabilizing passion is naturally minimized over time, and/or does not really exist in the first place.  Certainly, she sees passion as  not a reason to end a marriage, to alter a life course you committed to.  She keeps emphasizing my age, i.e., I’m too old to be having a wild sexual/dating life, I’m pursuing a fantasy more appropriate to someone in their twenties.

It’s so confusing to know what to make of everything.  Spouse may be right.  Although Therapist says Spouse and I do not really share enough values or interests in life to be truly compatible.  Therapist does seem to perceive Spouse as very much being dependent on me, taking advantage of me financially and emotionally/motivationally.  Of course, Therapist doesn’t say this, but intimates it.

Certainly I’m very concerned with my age, feeling too old to be going through all this shit.  I can’t believe I’ve gotten so old.  Just wait, you won’t believe it when it happens to you, either.  One day I was in my early 30s, the next day I was in my late 30s, and suddenly I’m in my early 40s, clearly moving past the age that most people find women sexually attractive.  Sure, I’m scared I won’t ever have a good relationship again.  Sure, I’m afraid I’m sort of fading into the wood-work (the background).  But still, I hate the house, can’t live this way any more, don’t at all believe Spouse will ever be able to change her messiness.  I’m bored, I hate the suburbs.  I’m incredibly sexually focused, more so than I’ve ever been in my life and I had a moderately high sex drive to begin with.  I’ll be god-damned if I’ll sit around not having sex the rest of my life, or forcing myself to have sex with someone that I love but simply am not sexually attracted to.

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