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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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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[...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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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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