Unrequited Love Blog

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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I still avoid watching weddings on tv or in movies.  They’re just painful to watch.  I just get pissed off and stirred up, something makes me want to turn away and ignore those scenes.  At the same time, I feel ridiculously self-indulgent for doing so.  This is going on 22 months and still my stomach clinches, my mind avoids memories or emotional triggers…

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I began thinking more clearly about writing a blog, getting some of this stuff out there for abreaction and feedback. Still thinking about Jessica, still very sexual, I make new sexual fantasies all the time.   Thinking about her around 80% of the time.

Late October: Before my brother’s wedding (his second marriage), even a couple days before, I feel Jessica is clearly a fantasy. My feelings are no more real than those of a teenager in love with Brad or Angelina, or at least no more than those of a child or teenager in love with an unavailable, popular peer. But in my sister-in-law-to-be’s hotel suite, watching her get ready, wearing her white wedding dress and placing her veil on, I felt a sharp pain in my gut, and found myself wondering what Jessica looked like in her dress, felt again her unavailability, and my desire, my loss…

At my brother’s wedding, I felt clearly it was so wrong to even think about her as available to me. They were married before God, I’m sure they love each other. I felt ashamed to be even having those thoughts and feelings about a woman who was so clearly “taken,” legally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Still, I’m still caught thinking about her so much – remembering her through memories, imagining who she might be through fantasy…

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I got married because I wanted to be married.  I met Spouse through match.com and we began dating.  First couple of dates seemed to go well.  We have similar values and life goals (marriage, children, atheist – her, agnostic/pagan – me, home ownership, stability).  She is psychologically-minded and funny, smart.  She had never dated a woman before, but always identified bisexual just never pursued it.

Clues something was wrong:

1) her incredibly messy apartment that she kept saying she would clean up

2) my intuition telling me she would be fun to date but not to marry

3) my intuition telling me she might be a little too stable for me

4) I was never really attracted to her, sex was never great, more of an affectionate bonding experience

5) she hated the city

6) she did not have a real career, had floundered a bit after her 7 years at college

7) she yelled at me early on for something, I can’t remember what, over the phone and I cried, felt frustrated, confused, and that she was way overreacting to whatever it was

Later, she lost her job and I invited her to move in with me.  Read the rest of this entry »

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