Unrequited Love Blog

I’m thinking this will be my final post on this blog.  It seems a good day for it, I have a sore throat and a fever so I’m kind of out of it and have more distance on everything.

What to say?  Jessica just feels so far away from me now.  She’s probably had kids or will be having them shortly, probably has moved, is surely further along in her career.  I still think about her and miss her but I can’t continue to focus on her.

So what has it all meant?  It was very difficult for me to recognize and admit that I was in love with Jessica, and it was very difficult for me to see that her not loving me back didn’t have to be a tragedy.  To see that the meaning of this love falls somewhere in between — in between crush/limerence and committed love is real romantic love, in between comedy and tragedy are real non-hyperbolized feelings, in between labels of “can’t live without her love” and “of little consequence” is “vitally important.”  My ability to feel and recognize my love has been vitally important for me.  It has served as a catalyst for change in my life — my divorce, re-evaluating what I am looking for in a relationship, taking more risks, becoming more engaged with life.

So why was this experience so intense for me?  Did I love Jessica more than other women, unrequited or within a relationship?  No, not really.  Did the love feel different in substantial ways?  Well, sort of.  The physical and psychological “symptoms” of being in love are pretty consistent with all my previous experiences.  But the longing, sense of grief, and edge of desire were much stronger with this one.  Overall, it somehow felt more “real” to me.  Probably simply because I am older, more self-aware, more confident, more ready for an experience that envelopes all of the qualities of love — strong desire, sustained intimacy, and responsibility or purposefulness.

I hope I fall in love again, I hope I fall in love with someone who loves me back.  But even if I don’t fall in love again or get what I want, this experience has been meaningful and worth it.  Although I hope I never fall in love with another student or otherwise unavailable person, it’s just too disappointing and painful.   My love for Jessica has been real, has been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Thanks for listening…

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I always have apocalyptic fantasies when I’m in love.  I’ve been thinking about what the meaning of these ubiquitous fantasies might be.  Like I’ve said in previous posts, I tend to run toward biological explanations for social behavior.  So, the appeal of apocalyptic fantasies is no surprise, it sort of hangs together.  “Back to basics” being the theme of biology and disaster, I suppose.

My fantasies involve basically one of two  scenarios:

1. There is some sort of nuclear or social disaster, and I drive to Jessica’s place (or whoever I’m focused on for the moment), we take dogs, guns, and various assorted relatives and head for a more rural area to stake a claim in the post-apocalyptic world.
2. There isn’t really a disaster per se, but Jessica and I have a quiet and private revelation that life as we know it just is not what we want.  We want something more “real,” more vital.  We move out to an isolated area, or maybe a commune, often in these fantasies she is already pregnant, and we raise a family.

I think the psychological issue bubbling up from my unconscious to the surface is a desire to have a more meaningful, engaging, focused life.  To excel under pressure, to focus on survival to the eclipse of everything else (societal expectations like the rat race, social niceties, personal and community politics, keeping up with the Joneses, etc).  I want to focus solely on being with Jessica, perhaps with a small community of like-minded others, farming and hunting, communing with nature.  It has come to me that these are basically Eden-before-the-Fall fantasies, idyllic natural settings with an idyllic natural focus (procreation, protection of loved ones, intimate communities, living closer to the edge of procuring food and safety, closer to nature’s red tooth and claw).

Classic love/limerence fantasies.  It just speaks to me of what has been missing in my life, what I have not yet had the courage to pursue — deeper engagement, real romantic love (I’ve had shadows of romantic love in the past but I’m really ready for the deeper stuff now), sacrifice for my immediate family, and the establishment of core values that make the anemic offerings of bland 21st century society pale in comparison.

Apocalypse.  End of the world (as we know it).  Return me to a state of grace.

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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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Romance aside, or dead-and-buried, a post-hoc analysis of why I might have fallen in love with Jessica, in particular, follows.

Much of it likely had to do with timing.  I am disappointed in my marriage, sexually and emotionally.  I am feeling my age, feeling bored and isolated, wanting to be young again and generally experiencing a mid-life crisis.  A mid-life crisis that includes grief about not having children, so I fall for someone who is still young enough to bear children.  My Spouse tends to disagree with many of my psychological explanations for people’s behavior, despite asking me for my informed opinion.  Jessica seemed to think I knew what I was talking about.  She seemed to admire me and see me as competent or impactful.  She kept staring at me sort of wistfully, it pulled soft, romantic feelings from me.  She offered an intimacy of communication, of psychological-mindedness, that resonated with me.  Her being heterosexually identified (as far as I know), the power of crafting a seduction story was very appealing.  The admiration and romantic pull  made for a heavy dose of strong sexual attraction.  All these things came together in a way that made me view Jessica, a perfectly ordinary person, in an extraordinary light.  This is what Tennov called the process of  “crystallization” in love or limerance.

Please offer comments…

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Well, yes.  Several times.  Not for quite a while, though.  Plus, I think you kind of forget what the experience really feels like when you’re outside of it, when you’re not in love.  Kind of like childbirth, you forget the pain so you can talk yourself into trying to have another one.

This love has stuck with me the longest past the “final contact.”  Being in love past the end of a relationship, or past the physical removal of proximity to my loved one, has generally lasted 6 months or so, maybe 8-10 for one woman.  This “in love” period for Jessica was around 17-18 months, much longer.  Not necessarily stronger than feelings of being in love with other women, but definitely longer.  I’m not sure why, I’ll think on it.

To me, being in love feels the same in a broad way, but the specifics can vary.  Like, being in love broadly involves strong sexual feelings, a desire for emotional connection through sex and in a multitude of other ways, feeling soft or vulnerable towards that person, feeling protective of that person, feeling possessive of that person.  But being in love with a particular person is nuanced and changes the “flavor” of the dish (or the patterns the lightning makes, or rhythm of the cresting waves, whatever metaphor you prefer).

Being in love with Jessica is bringing out dominant features of my love.  I feel more protective, much more possessive.  Although as I’ve mentioned in a previous post (“backstory“), not as much sexually possessive as emotionally possessive.  I want her to belong to me.  This is not necessarily how I’ve felt with past loves.  Something about Jessica or my feelings toward her brings out what I would call a mating instinct, a desire to let everyone around know she is mine, a desire to physically fight for her, to protect her, to make sure she gets through life safely, to increase my provider status by making more money, working harder and longer hours.  Some of my fantasies involve having babies but I would say the major focus is on me as a dominant provider rather than as a parent.

Now, undoubtedly this “mating instinct” nuance of my feelings is related to my mid-life crisis, feeling grief about not having children or a nuclear family, feeling older in general and wanting to be younger again.  However, I strongly feel these feelings are not complete projection on my part, but that something about the dynamic I felt with Jessica brings out these particular feelings.

Please leave comments!

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