By the third month I had met the woman of my dreams.
A year later, I blocked her for the second time.
Between those two points, I was on fire.
***
October, 2019
We met on Tinder before the world slammed shut just five months later. She set her location to LA, stating that she was planning a visit in December.
It never happened.
Being on different continents was bad enough. Add a global pandemic to the mix and you develop a new tolerance for pain.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
a close friend asked me much later, wondering why I pursued her.
Unavailability? Her looks? The fantasy of winning a prize I could show off to my friends? Her accent? God, her accent…
It was all of the above, but it was more than that.
There was a playful curiosity about us. Aside from the emotional bullet wounds toward the end, communicating with her was fun, invigorating, and easy.
***
Like most twenty-something women these days, her Instagram is a well-curated gallery of fantasy-inducing imagery. A menagerie of moments that I wrote my own stories to, enamored with a highlight reel.
I dared not be like all her other stalkers, so I only liked two of her pictures at key moments. I consciously orchestrated the tension, ignoring my impulse to reveal how I felt, and used all of my energy to refrain from complimenting her looks.
I knew early on that a core need of hers was intellectual validation. She had enough physical admirers.
Who was taking her pictures, and why did she have them taken?
I silently asked these questions, fearing the answers.
Was she screwing the photographer? She’s half-naked in many of them.
Is she a model, or maybe she does porn? No idea.
All I wanted was to believe my own narrative, and to get her on the phone as often as possible.
I could listen to her voice on repeat.
The Best Sex I Never Had
“I want to see your cock,” she texts me one day.
Whoa, ok.
At that moment, “I want get to know you” became “I want to fuck you” — for both of us.
However, my inner critic was screaming at me.
Why me? Why someone on the other side of the planet, when she can seemingly have any guy she wants? Maybe that’s the draw — the mystery. The fairy tale in a foreign land.
I fought through the doubt, and soon we were filling each other’s phones and minds with graphic depictions of everything we desired. No holding back.
My phone became an adult novel about sexual experiences, taboos, and a swirl of masculine/feminine energy unlike anything I’ve experienced prior. I had not watched porn in almost a year and a half, but when the sexting started you could say that I reset the clock.
I needed to see her — to feel her, now.
I offered to fly her out to LA, all expenses paid. My mind was consumed with painted nails gripping sweat-soaked sheets, pre and post-breakfast sex, and road trips along the coast.
As I watched the sunset on a surf trip to Baja, I imagined her standing in front of me with my arms wrapped around her, kissing her neck and talking about our future.
I was lost.
I later found out later that she had been seeing someone.
I later found out that it was during that trip, when my heart was drunk on dreams of her, that they had sex for the first time.
March 11, 2020
“We hereby declare COVID-19 to be a global pandemic.”
— World Health Organization
No one in, no one out. Her borders seal shut, and the U.S. begins lockdown. The stock market plunges, and soon all attention turns to an escalating crisis.
Interaction goes virtual, and people empty grocery store shelves of hand sanitizer and paper products. A wave of fear and isolation sweeps the world, and a flurry of images of hazmat suits and hospital beds fill our daily lives.
And my love…
Once just a plane ride away, became a prisoner in her own land. She might as well have flown to Venus, and still…I held on.
I could barely work.
One of the worst things about it all was the disparity between countries. The USA — supposedly the preeminent global superpower, had lost. Whether you believe the news or not, we entered a series of stringent lockdowns but apparently not soon enough. They kept coming.
She on the other hand, is in a country that curtailed the spread early and enjoyed a near-normal existence. Parties, dinners, dates, hookups — all were possible for her but increasingly difficult for me.
This drove me crazy.
I felt like a caged bear, watching her live her life almost as if there was no pandemic at all. While I’m sitting here with my phone in one hand and the other on my genitals, I had a strong suspicion she was going on dates with men who were actually available.
Turns out I was right.
I told her at one point that we should be non-monogamous, trying to set up some realistic expectations around the distance, but it didn’t work.
My obsession grew, and with the hints about the other guys in her life, plus the growing impossibility of ever seeing her, I was wearing down like the tread of an old tire.
Eventually I’d blow out.
***
One night, after sending her a vulnerable text — one that would go unanswered, I see her Instagram story.
Her at a party and a guy dancing with his shirt open.
My amygdala lights up, takes over my body, and with my heart racing I do the most hurtful thing I can think of.
I block her on all our methods of communication. No explanation, no discussion.
We were supposed to have video sex the following night, and every cell in my body screamed that it wasn’t going to happen. There would be another excuse. There was always an excuse.
The trust evaporated in a flash, and I severed.
The withdrawal was like pure, high voltage electricity. All I could do was write, call my friends, and distract myself with exercise, food, and Zoom meetings.
Two weeks later I was laid off.
Early July, 2020
I unblock her. I need her back.
No. I need a fix, but I don’t reach out. 30 days no contact, right?
At week three however she texts me, and angrily tells me she’s dating someone she’s “very happy with.” A rebound?
No, the guy who’s been around all along.
I apologize profusely. I text her a letter written in a Google Doc that took me a week to write. It was supposed to be hand-written but I need her to read it ASAP.
No response from her other than the little heart emoji you get when you press and hold on a message. I felt so low, so ashamed, and so defective that I immediately went into counseling.
The knee-jerk reaction to block her made it abundantly clear that I didn’t have a grip on my triggers. After years of recovery I was still not able to regulate my emotions.
So I did what all the breakup manuals suggest and got busy improving myself. I started a new career as a coach. I continued my counseling. I dove into studying Attachment Theory, love addiction, and how trauma affects the mind and body.
I wanted to prove to her, and myself, that I can change.
And I did.
What happened as a result however, is that I began to see things clearly — slowly. Myself, her, this whole storage of anger toward my mother, and my addiction to unavailable women.
Maybe we weren’t meant to be together. Maybe the whole thing was just obsession, fantasy, and anxiety. Maybe the lockdown pushed me into a scarcity mindset, with me thinking that I’d never find anyone like her again.
Sure, there would never be another her, but there would be someone.
“Dude, what clearer sign do you need than a global pandemic!? You’re not meant to be together!”
Another friend’s voice echoed in my head but I wasn’t ready to hear it.
I wanted to hear her. Her voice, her accent, and her funny little phrases that needed translation.
Eventually though, I had to stop living out this elaborate story. She told me in the beginning that she couldn’t commit to guys, and there I was, trying to stitch together a long distance relationship.
Eventually, I had to stop being a victim.
January 21, 2021
I hated that I had to do it, but I have boundaries now.
After many more months of leaving the door open, I had to shut it.
She’d walk back in, hot and heavy with her surgical love bombs, and I took the bait every time. Then she’d just ignore me or turn cold, only to find a reason to contact me again. Sometimes she was clearly buzzed.
The last straw came when she calls me out of the blue and tells me she wants to video chat.
Of course I do. I want back into The Matrix.
I’m hesitant though, so I ask her if she’s serious about it. She proclaims that she is, saying another one of her phrases I don’t understand. My heart lights up like a Christmas tree.
A few days later she texts me and tells me that she doesn’t want to video chat, because she can’t like someone in another country again.
At first I’m sad — at first I understand — and then I’m pissed.
Enough with this fucking yo-yo.
I get her on the phone and tell her we should just stop talking. She agrees, and we unfollow each other on Instagram after we hang up. My eyes grow heavy and my chest tightens, and I would feel that weighted sadness for the rest of the rest of the month.
I felt devalued at the thought that the only time she wanted me was when she thought I had moved on. It was time to make that a reality.
Not trusting myself to ignore a future text or pick up the phone if she called, I blocked her on every app that I could.
I didn’t just want to close the door. I wanted to weld it.
Today Things have been going well since then. My anxiety is gone and my dating life has done a 180 for the better.
If I’m not careful however, I’ll still get flooded with emotion at the thought of seeing her at the airport for the first time. To think about kissing her so intensely I lose all thought, and about practically screwing her in the baggage claim.
Some people just come into your life at the right time, cause you the right amount of pain, and send you off in a better direction for it. Overall the lessons were well worth the price of admission, so I have no regrets.
I still have the food item she sent me, that I asked for, along with the envelope. I used to stare at her handwriting on the address forms, wondering what she was thinking when she filled them out.
Despite wanting nothing more than to close this chapter in my life, I still have the evidence that I was once obsessed with a woman I never met.
—
This post was previously published on Medium.
***
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Photo credit: Agê Barros on Unsplash