My therapist asked me to think about what it was that keeps drawing me back to the feelings I have for ThatFriend. The truth is, maybe I’ll never know. One of the many unfortunate things about human design is that we can’t choose who we love and we don’t always even know why we love. Ask yourself why you love your partner and I would bet money you’ll run out of reasons before you have it fully explained. Feelings are ridiculous, they’re something that I’m sometimes surprised hasn’t evolved out of us by now- especially considering that being partnered to someone has rarely been based on feelings throughout human evolution, so why did that desire stick with us? Why haven’t we become more inherently practical about partnering and propagating the species? Sometimes I wonder if my feelings were mutated from too much reading as a child, it seems strange that someone who wasn’t loved as a child would want to be loved SO MUCH- shouldn’t I have just accepted that it wasn’t real? I accepted that fairies and dragons weren’t real, so why have I held onto the concept of romantic love? And why have I targeted ThatFriend with the strongest emotion I have ever experienced? An emotion I cannot explain, revoke, get over or sometimes, even deal with.
Let’s start by listing the reasons I love him that I can enumerate: Physical attraction; trust; mutual respect; intellectual compatibility; shared interests; shared ethics/morality; compatible styles of communication; he has always been there when I’ve needed him; empathy. I’m sure part of it can also be attributed to some latent belief in love at first sight and the way my breath was knocked out of my chest when I first laid eyes on him. Surely there could be some silly bit of hero worship because of the times I have felt that he has saved me- or probably more honestly, the times he has enabled me to save myself. I love him for being there even after we’ve warred with one another. I love him for the ways in which he is protective of me when he sees I’m feeling fragile. I love him because he sees me for the person I am deep, down inside. This is going to sound trite and cliche and ridiculous, but even when he frustrates me, I feel whole when we talk.
And then there are the reasons I love him in spite of: When he can’t break out of therapist-mode and responds to me with something like “I can see how that could make you feel that way.” instead of just commiserating for a moment and saying “That sucks.” The fact that we have never had good sex (possibly due to a booze handicap.) The times he abandoned me in public. The times he believed the word of someone he barely knew without even consulting me for my side of the story. That I’m not his type and he apparently prefers mealy-mouthed bland types, only to wonder why they can’t keep up with him or turn out to have mad jealous streaks. He doesn’t return my feelings.
I have cried for him more than anyone else alive. I have pined for him more than anyone else. It is the one feeling that has the capability of making me happier or more miserable than I could ever be, and so far my experience tends toward that misery for the simple and faultless reason of being single-sided.
My therapist asked if it’s based on a fear of rejection, but I contest that because I’ve been rejected and can’t be rejected any more or less. I’ve tried to get over it, I got married in part as an attempt to get over it (this was a retrospective realization.) She asked if it was his unavailability, but I don’t think it could be that- there was a time when I thought it might be a possibility if I could just wait it out and tell him how I felt while he was single. I was wrong, obviously, but in the end you can’t know unless you try, right?
I don’t expect that I’ll ever know why I love him. At this point, after so many years, I don’t know that I’ll ever stop loving him. I also doubt that our relationship will ever veer to another level. Honestly, a big part of me fears that my mother is right and no one will ever love me anyway, so I should be grateful that I at least have friends. But hey, I’m not alone- if it weren’t for unrequited love, what would the inspiration be for chick flicks? Romance novels? Poetry? Of course, usually authors write happy endings, but not everything can end that way. Just ask Billie Holiday, she gets it.
