Unrequited Love Blog

“The Mississippi’s mighty, but it starts in Minnesota, at a place you could walk across with five steps down…And I guess that’s how you started, like a pinprick to my heart, but now you rush right through me and I start to drown…”  Ghost, The Indigo Girls

So, when did it really start?  The first time I saw Jessica?  No.  The first time I spoke to her, or she to me?  No.  The first time I was really aware of being sexually attracted to her?  No, long before that.  The last month or so of class, when burgeoning self-awareness surfaced?  No, long before that.

It’s hard to identify when my feelings really began.  I mean, I can identify what I call the point of falling in love (Jessica just walking across the classroom, saying hi to me, and me becoming acutely aware of my attraction to her).  But I was not consciously aware of falling in love at the time, I only recognized being in love after the semester ended.  Looking back, I can identify that moment in time as a sort of falling over the edge of the cliff.

But I had felt the pull, or tug, of love for a long time before that.  I’ve begun thinking about when that love may have started, or at least when what eventually became love first began to pull on me.  Certainly, I felt it building during that whole semester, a sort of heightened interest in her, which of course I expressed by ignoring her.

Jessica was in another class of mine about two years prior to this one.  I don’t remember a whole lot from that class.  But I do recall feeling a sort of very low level pull toward her, just a barely perceptible heightened interest.  I remember a man in class who was interested in her, saying out loud in general “I’m not seeing anybody, how about you, Jessica?”  And she sort of widened her eyes, and said something like “Yes, I’ve been seeing someone for two years now.”  The guy goes “Oh….is it serious?” Jessica goes “Well, it’s sort of serious.  We’re not engaged or anything, but we’ve been living together for about two years.”  The guy said “oh”, looked disappointed.  I remember feeling such empathy for him and thinking to myself ouch, poor guy.  Later in the semester, or maybe earlier, I can’t quite remember, Jessica was talking about being at the Pride Parade and a student (it may have been the same guy, but I don’t know) goes “Jessica?  You’re gay?  Or bisexual?” and her eyes widened and turning away she said “Well, no, neither one actually…my boyfriend and I just like going, we think it’s fun!”  I felt amused and thought Well, she handled that pretty well. I remember when she nervously asked me about her topic for her paper, and I remember feeling kind of disappointed when she didn’t want my feedback on the paper after the end of class.  I pushed the disappointment away.  Individually, none of these recollections is particularly important or meaningful, but taken all together, I believe it indicates an interest in Jessica that I simply did not allow myself to be fully aware of.

In the next class, two years later, I barely remembered her.  Consciously.  But it’s funny to remember that even very early in the semester, I think around the third class meeting, Jessica was absent and I remember feeling kind of sad and wistful, and thinking I’m not going to see her today. I remember trying to talk with her before class and she kept referring to this other professor whom she clearly admired in more than one way, and I thought Ok, she doesn’t really seem to want to talk to me. When a conversation amongst a few students took place in front of me, and it became clear Jessica was engaged, I remember kind of thinking oh well, that’s that and feeling sad.  I remember sort following behind her like a puppy, going to a seminar, then apparently staring at her like a, well, like a lovestruck idiot, and others sort of noticing.  Then I noticed them noticing, and thought oh, was I staring?, felt embarrassed and looked down.  But again, I really wasn’t conscious of what I was doing, I was just doing it.  All of these thoughts were sort of conscious and unconscious at the same time.  I just wasn’t spending any time with them, didn’t put them together, didn’t allow myself to dwell on these thoughts and feelings at all.

Looking back, I can’t identify exactly when love started, only that it did start, and grew and grew and grew until it wasn’t containable anymore and spilled over and through my heart’s defenses.  What-would-become-love began with an imperceptible pinprick, then grew and grew, slowly and quietly but purposefully, until I fell over the edge and was truly fully in love.

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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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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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Well, it seemed so to me.  I don’t know what else to call it.  I stuttered in front of Jessica, couldn’t think, got confused, blushed, kept trying to ignore her but couldn’t stop staring at her, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, lost weight, thought about Jessica incessantly, had incredibly powerful and preoccupying sexual & emotional fantasies, went around buoyant or high on love for quite a while (intermittantly tempered with grief and despair), demonstrated poor judgement (sort of made a pass at her when she was straight, engaged, and a recently former student).

I suppose you could call all this stuff a crush, not love. Especially considering how little contact I actually had with her, how limited our interactions were.

However, the fact that it’s gone on so long (about 18 months for the physical symptoms and the emotional stuff still continues), and how strong my feelings have been, and how it’s lead me to make major changes in my life (get a divorce, return to the city, rethink what I’m looking for in a relationship), all this makes me think it was more love than crush.  Unrequited love.

The danger in calling a crush “love” is in giving it too much weight, too much impact on your self-esteem, on your ability to see available others as attractive, too much emphasis on over-interpreting fantasy.  However, there are also dangers in refusing to recognize love when it is there.  It’s emotionally dangerous to deny such an important emotion as romantic love when it happens to you because you’re too intellectually focused to feel it, or because you can’t risk the shame of acknowledging it if the love is not returned, or because it seems unacceptable or unwanted in some way.  This kind of emotional tyranny may result in a pretty narrow life.  Which is just what I’m trying to avoid.  I’m trying to move away from making conventional choices simply because that’s what others say we should do, trying to move away from filtering emotions through a maturely reasoned set of accepted worldviews.  I suppose this is at least one reason why I call my feelings for Jessica love, and not a crush.

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I’m not sure how much longer I can keep writing this blog.  I’ll keep the website up, I’m hoping to get more conversation going there.  As the intensity of my feelings have ebbed away, so has the need and the energy for proclaiming them.  I’m going to keep it up for a bit just to have a record of my unrequited love over time — how it was at the beginning, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, then over time how that changed. I would still like to post some of my fantasies, as they seemed very typical or universal for love.

This personal blog may turn into more of a musing on my upcoming divorce, how falling in love with Jessica sort of set that in motion, and how I feel over time.  I would still like to hear from readers about my personal blog.  And please do particpate in discussions on the website (Unrequited Love Website).

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