Jennifer Lowe wrote a wonderful post on the type of man you should not fall in love with. I’m that type of man.
She’s right.
You shouldn’t fall in love with men like me. But it’s not because we leave one day and “you will never know why.”
There is our side of the story as well. Here it is.
Yes, your intellect draws me to you. It isn’t just your writing, but also how you’re sure of what you want and what you don’t. I avoided relationships because I was waiting for a woman like you. The wait feels worth it. I too fell deeply in love.
What we have is comfortable and sacred. I hope we grow old together. We will have our ups and downs. But as long as we trust each other, we will be okay.
You feel chatty and naughty like a 4-year old. I feel the same.
Then things change.
You share your problems with me and love that I have a solution for each of them. But when I share mine with you, you say, “I feel like hugging you right now,” or, “I’m holding space for you.”
Sorry sweet, but I don’t need that. I don’t want you to place my head on your bosom and let your heartbeat soothe me. I just want to feel heard by someone I trust without feeling judged. (Your outpour of affection feels like a judgment.)
You say that we no longer laugh together the way we used to. But there is nothing wrong in that. Our love is not like Allie and Nick in The Notebook. Yes, we asked each other whether it would be. We hoped it would.
But let’s come back to earth. The Notebook a riveting two-hour watch. We can’t live each day for the next 2 (or 20) years like that. That kind of romance is toxic.
Romance, Mark Manson wrote, is like alcohol. When I was young, I thought this was the only real thing. As I grew up, I began to trust this ‘intoxicating’ feeling less and less. I learned to use it in moderation.
Moderation is what we need as mature people. I hope you will use romance in moderation too. But I’m afraid you will feel I don’t love you anymore. So I don’t tell you that.
You tell me that I’m the most important person in your life. I love it! Until you make me the sun of your earth.
I don’t want to be at the center of your universe. I fell in love with you because YOU are at the center of your universe. You independent, amazing, intelligent, thoughtful woman, you.
I don’t want to take that place. Nor do I want to keep you at the center of mine.
Trust me, it’s not a problem. We’re okay, and I tell you. But you don’t agree. You say something is wrong, that I’m blowing you off. You expect me to drop what I’m doing and rush to comfort you. I don’t know what to say.
The comfort is gone. What replaces it is an air so thick with expectation and tension that it can be cut with a knife.
The relationship no longer feels as comfortable as home. It feels like a home I want to escape from. And deep down in your heart, you know as well as me that we cannot go on like this.
So I stop talking. Not because I’m a selfish bastard, but because you’ve stopped listening. The voices in your head got so loud that they drowned out what I’ve been trying to say. Because you pull me so close that you push me away.
The discipline because of which you’ll never hear from me again? It comes from knowing how conversations will turn out. Admit it, just like I’ve made up my mind, so have you. When we speak again, our conversations will quickly move to what an asshole I was and how hard you worked to make it work.
But that’s the point. You didn’t have to work hard.
We were okay going with the flow. By working hard, we tried to turn this beautiful, sacred thing into something it could never be. And we tried to turn ourselves into people we could never be.
I didn’t want to let you go. It hurt me. It still does. Even now, I sometimes skim through your Instagram profile (if you haven’t blocked me), not because I want to know whether you’ve found someone else, but because I hope to see that you’re happy.
P.S. I still love you.
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Previously published on Psiloveyou.xyz.
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