He was 2 years younger than me and in a predictable start of a “Plan B” story, we started as friends. Really good friends. We got to know each other through Facebook messenger because we met right before I left for Oktoberfest in Europe. I felt a springy excitement whenever I’d hear the familiar ping! from my phone. Even with the 9-hour time difference, we found treasured overlapping pockets of time to cram in hundreds of messages to each other.
Two months later I was daring him to kiss me in a dark, reverberating club. I could tell that he really liked me and I was seduced by his restraint.
“Why haven’t you made a move on me?” I mused between beats of heavy music.
He answered me with a kiss and our plot thickened.
* * *
We became a dance of magnetic poles — him always wanting to be close and me slightly repelling him away. I wanted him close, but not that close. Because when we were alone, I’d catch him staring with shameless adoration and it made me feel naked. Exposed. He seemed to love the parts of myself I was ashamed of, like how my face looked without shaded in eyebrows, or the way I always spilled crumbs when I ate. I wanted his attention but I felt uncomfortable when he gave me too much of it.
We bowled forwards anyway, directionless and mismatched in our desires. We spent nights pressed up against each other in my full-size bed. Physically close but nowhere near a label. He became my Plan B. I liked being around him but I wasn’t enamored by him enough to date him.
“I think I love you”, he confessed one night over text message.
I looked at the text with a furrowed brow.
“Wait what? Are you drunk?” I replied, confused.
He was drunk, but he meant it.
* * *
I eventually found a shiny new Plan A and promptly sauntered into the sunset with him. By doing this, I shattered Plan B’s heart. I didn’t mean to. I just felt an alluring instant attraction to Plan A that I never felt with Plan B.
Almost a year went by with Plan A and my heart started to whisper to me that something wasn’t right. I found myself thinking of Plan B, missing the way he noticed my tiny details. I was confused because Plan A was everything I wanted on paper. But my heart wasn’t happy.
* * *
After Plan A and I broke up, I apologized profusely to Plan B for callously dropping him. He was gracious and forgiving. He found someone to date after me, but had also felt dulled by the relationship. We were both newly single and started to gravitate towards each other again, just as easily as the first time.
We promised to be “friends with benefits” but nothing else. Since we were both newly single, we figured we were both way too broken for anything real right now. And that felt safe. He laid out the plan:
“When one of us gets feelings, let’s just be honest, and then we can stop. But for now, let’s just have fun”.
And we did have fun. We traveled internationally together. We went to Burning Man together. We went camping. We took road-trips. And it was on one of these such road-trips that I realized that I loved him.
We were driving back from Yosemite and in my tired stupor, I had left my wallet in a Chipotle but didn’t realize it until we were almost home. Chipotle couldn’t mail it to me for security reasons, so our only option was to drive back. I mapped it out and it was a 3-hour round-trip.
To my surprise, I didn’t mind the thought of 3 more hours with him at all. I thought to myself, well if I have to spend 3 hours with anyone right now, I’m so happy it’s him! And in that moment, I knew something had irreversibly shifted inside of me. I had fallen for my Plan B.
* * *
The falling did not go as I had hoped. I wrestled with my feelings for months. I was casually dating other people and so was Plan B, but we continued to spend inordinate amounts of time together. I started to throw out tiny hooks to see if Plan B would bite. He didn’t, so I took a more nuclear approach. I wrote him a multi-page love letter explaining everything about how I’d slowly fallen for him.
I’m sorry I didn’t see it as love before. I’m used to love being unavailable and difficult to obtain. But you’re different, you feel like home and infinity to me all at once.
When I gave him the letter, he read it and then gave me the teary-eyed news that he was newly dating someone else. He told me that he loved me but that he didn’t know how to date me, so he was choosing her. I gathered up the smithereens of my heart and began the process of moving on.
* * *
Three months later he was back.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about your letter. I’m in love with you too. I want to be with you”.
But his heart was tumultuous and unsettled. He knew that if he and I started anything, it would go from zero to 100 in a matter of months. So he reneged and said he wasn’t ready. I was crushed. We stopped talking.
* * *
Nine months later he was back again. He had missed me, he admitted. He had been waiting for the right moment to talk to me again. My heart fluttered uncontrollably in my chest. The feeling of being the object of his attention again was sugary and addictive. Was he finally ready?
He wasn’t. He had gotten back together with that same girlfriend again, and then broken up again. He was still finding his footing, but he wanted me in his life as something like a friend.
“We are not just friends”, I rebuked, offended at the thought.
We agreed to stop talking again, but this time in a more mutual way. I left hoping he’d eventually realize he was still in love with me.
* * *
Five months later, he came back for the final time. It was a lot like the other times. He brought me a small sentimental gift he’d gotten me from Africa. He told me that he had missed me a lot. My heart did its usual flips. But the months of expectant waiting had emboldened me.
“So why aren’t we dating?” I shot at him.
“Because I don’t think I’d ever made you truly happy”, he shot back.
In that moment I finally realized — he knew he was my Plan B. He knew I was never quite all in. He knew that I could find another Plan A and be gone in an instant. All along I had glossed over this simple concept — expecting my Plan B to be with me was expecting him to settle for someone who settled for him.
So I untangled myself from my Plan B and set him free. Because in love, there should be no Plan B, only Plan A.
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Previously published on “Hello, Love”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: Ryan Jacobson on Unsplash