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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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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I keep having vivid fantasies of me walking in on Jessica giving some (male) professor a blow job.  Like he’s someone I know and I am coming to tell him class is ready for him or whatever, and there they are. And she’s a grad student of his.  I don’t know where this stuff comes from, it’s just there, torturing me.

I become so enraged!  In the fantasy and in real life.  Because clearly it’s not that she’s too good to have extramarital sex, or it’s not that she’s 100% happy in her marriage, she just didn’t want me!  I feel stupid and alone and violently angry…

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I guess I’m getting mad because something still hurts. Even more now, maybe. I think of Jessica married and having kids and being happy and I just feel sick, sick and lonely. My chest hurts, I’m vaguely sick to my stomach. I see her becoming traditional, hardly ever going out, growing apart from her husband emotionally, bored at home with the baby. (Believe me, this is pretty much what happens in most marriages, according to my textbooks and according to my patients.) I see her husband simply not being able to offer her the level of emotional intimacy she wants, most men simply don’t work that way. Aside:  Of course, this part of the fantasy is ridiculous as well as self-serving, it’s unfair to characterize him as such a stereotype, I don’t know what he’s really like. Plus, I think about the men in my own life (brother, cousin, friends, patients) and I know they love, and love well, but just aren’t good at identifying their feelings and talking — it doesn’t mean they see the women in their lives as two-dimensional objects of ownership. Or another version of that fantasy that I spontaneously torture myself with involves her staying more active and engaged, having a successful career, becoming more self-confident, getting hit on by colleagues on a regular basis (which pisses me off to no end).  Either way, she is retreating into the distance, and I miss her, I swear I do.

But what the hell?  How real can this be at this point?  Even to begin with I barely knew this woman, didn’t talk or interact with her very much.  I know that I should recognize her as a fantasy that has very little to do with the actual person, but it doesn’t feel that way.  It still feels real. And I don’t understand why this love is hanging around so long.  Is this something I am doing to myself to push through my divorce?  Am I just prone to fantasy and she is my current favorite character?  What’s changed is that I don’t feel feverish and crazy, I’m not staying up nights unable to sleep, or unable to eat.  My mind isn’t focused on Jessica 99% of the time, the cognitive intrusiveness of love/limerence has faded considerably.  I don’t really feel “in love” but something remains, I’m just not sure what to call it — love, obsession, fantasy distraction, wounded pride, childhood disappointment?

What I can say with some degree of certitude is that as you get older, falling in love actually becomes more real, rather than less real.  You’re more able to see the other person in a realistic way, rather than placing him/her on a pedastel or looking to them to save you.  This deeper level of “real” to being in love also makes it hurt more, and I think, longer.

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