Hands Wide Open
AUGUST 28, 2020
Sometimes I make lists of all my lovers. They all cry at the end. Big sad little boy tears. “I will always love you” they say. I cry too. For a different reason. I cry grief at yet another failed relationship. I am profoundly sad and in deep emotional pain.
How do you stop loving someone? Yet each time I manage to stop my love. To see only the bad, the disappointments, the dysfunctional ways in which the right person was the wrong person.
My repetition compulsion—no matter the exterior disguise my subconscious can lock onto the wrong person, even when he masquerades as Man Alright. Man Evolved. Functional Man. Emotionally available Man. Communicative Man. The last Man Wrong really had me fooled. I was so direct. So open. Point blank gave him a million opportunities to exit. Each time our relationship was about to go deeper I’d ask, how are you feeling about us? Are you okay?
He was the run-away groom. Having proposed to more than a handful of women in his life, always calling things off at the last minute. “I stayed because I loved her dog.” I didn’t want marriage, and while he did love my dog but he also loved me. “Move to NY with me, Sweetie” he said. An offer I couldn’t accept. We didn’t even live together here, how can moving to NY and living together there be a good idea?
He held an overly romanticized vision of us in Manhattan. Never mind that we had two homes in LA. Plus friends and community in LA. I also had family and my medical team. Not something to easily walk away from. He is on the road 3-4 days during the week. Why would I want to be all alone in NYC? I joke and ask are we going to get two apartments 4 miles apart? He says we will be together. Okay I say, how about a trial? I will live with you here for 30 days and see how it feels for both of us.
Part of me hoped he would be happy and it would work for him. I knew I could be there. But for him, at age 58 and never finding the right woman to commit comfortably—I knew I was pushing him. A week later he called me to say he couldn’t do “this” anymore. He was more comfortable being single. I said he couldn’t end our nearly three years over the phone. He had to come over, sit face to face to discuss like a man. The next night he showed up with all my stuff. Neatly wrapped, packed, lovingly folded all in bags. My makeup packed in individual zip lock baggies. He cried his eyes out over how much he loved me and how he would always love me. I cried too. I knew I would not always love him.
I told him I don’t do breakups and get-back-togetherings. I gave him back his keys, and he asked if he should hang on to mine in case I needed help or something. You are not my person anymore I say. If I need something I will ask someone else.
My heart was breaking, I loved him for so long with my hands wide open. No friends could understand what I meant by that, but I understood it, and I knew it was the only way to be with him. And then he started the “move to NY Sweetie” nonsense, and as he started to pull away my hands clutched closed. In the weeks that followed, I focused on how in 58 years this man could never find the right woman. And that thought helped me to know it wasn’t personal.
I don’t want to love with my hands wide open. I want to be free, to love someone who can accept and feel my love, arms open or wrapped tightly around him.