Growing up, I would often wonder why my parents still lived together. I never saw any sign of affection, they didn't hold hands nor kiss with any kind of love or tenderness. It was like watching two strangers live together, so little in common beyond having kids and a mutual history. They went to the same high school for a year, knew the same people growing up. When my mother returned from her West Coast travels, my aunt re-introduced them after a soccer match.
I know in some way my mother wanted security and my father represented that. And in turn, my father wanted a rebel, someone different from the women he had met, someone different to help distinguish him from his brothers and sisters who had all married very staid people.
And so they forged this marriage and it lasted twenty years. But they realized you can't love a representation. Masks are mislaid or re-painted and over time, my father began to rebel against my mother and my mother, tired of the suffocating security, realizing it had made her a prisoner, looked for love elsewhere. The marriage crumbled slowly, they kept up appearances but my brother and I both witnessed the fighting, the unhappiness, the strain. My brother and I were in a way divided as I sided with my mother and he my father. (Thankfully, in our adulthood, we are more open to both our parents and see them and love them for them as opposed to a 'side' to pick.)
When they separated at first, I wasn't angry but I was. I said it was about time - my exact words - but I was bothered they couldn't have done it earlier. I hated my adolescence and having your parents split apart during the rockiest years of your own growth, doesn't give you a firm foothold in the world.
But I continued to study them, watch them in the wake of their dying unity. And in turn, their lessons have become my lessons. The question of love and how to love never leaves me because there have been occasions where I almost followed in their footprints.
In one instance, just turned twenty, newly home from B.C. I met a woman who worked at a local print and frame shop. How we met? I just went in to drop off my resume. We ended up talking for about two hours about books, poetry, painting and music. The next time I dropped by, I suggested we go for coffee. She was pretty but I was more attracted to our conversation. I didn't have a lot of friends at the time and wanted to be wanted. And here was my chance.
It started out as a kind of friendship that fell into a relationship that fell back into a friendship only to get more complicated by becoming a relationship again... all in the course of four months. She was the first woman whose body I explored. I had seen women naked in strip joints and the magazines my father stored on the top shelf of his closet. But here was a naked woman, in my presence, under my hands. And I kept telling myself, you're only attracted to her being attracted to you. The desire to see her naked, to kiss her became a kind of addiction but when we went out in public, I couldn't hold her hand, ashamed of myself for not being honest with both of us about how I truly felt.
The sexual chemistry was there but my attraction was based solely on what I have come to call the 'tractor beam'. With this woman, I was responding to her, reacting to her affection as opposed to being stimulated by my need and longing for her. The attraction wasn't mutual. During our time together, whether kissing or fooling around, a part of me felt like it was floating around, watching the scenes unfold. Kissing her, I felt this pity for myself because I wasn't going after what I truly wanted. I was settling.
Of course, it had to end. After a day trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, walking downtown, holding her hand, I knew I was being a fraud. We broke up the next day, quickly and painlessly though a part of my regretted it. I know I made the right decision and hoped something better would come along.
The 'tractor beam' didn't affect me until many years later. Dating fell by the way side due to being ill for so long - just getting through a day was an ordeal. But when I started to consider the opposite sex again, I either met the unrequited, the hard-to-get type or the 'tractor beam'. This occurred when I was living out west. I met a young lady in a continuing education class. We hit it off as friends and hung out. But I started picking up mixed messages. If we were friends, how come she made an effort to emphasize her cleavage? She also seemed incredibly sympathetic about everything I talked about. At times, it seemed I could do no wrong.
Then one night I suggested we become friends with benefits. No, that wouldn't do for and it was like I offended her.
Shortly after that, I invited her over for dinner. We drank a full bottle of wine, watched half of a movie together. She said she had to leave and the tractor beam took over.
Maybe it was just seeing her go, spending another night alone in my bed that made everything less real to me. Of course she was pretty - she's very attractive, brown eyes, nice cheeks, a soft voice - but I wasn't in love nor felt the hunger for her beyond the sexual and basic need of comfort.
Throughout our time that evening, I kept telling her I wanted to be her boyfriend and that we could work it out. But I was lying to myself and her and the friendship which had briefly become a relationship only barely recovered in the weeks thereafter. Waking up the next morning, I regretted my advancement to her - though she had given me enough cues and hints that would have tormented any sane, single man with sexual yearning - and wrote her an email that morning.... I should have waited though. Receiving my email, she left work emotionally destroyed. Angry emails found their way in my inbox and we didn't speak for two months.
When we re-met, she had found someone else...
And I suppose, I'm writing this now because I'm concerned it might be happening again. I've met someone recently, enjoyed our conversation but I don't see her as the kind of woman I want. She's had her trials, her disappointments and it's true, there's something fascinating about her but fascination isn't love (nor is infatuation which is kind of a sad obsession).
And it's one of those things where if I go somewhere, I seem to keep meeting her. I feel the quiet tragedy build up and pray for the strength to avoid any miscommunication or moment of weakness. It makes me wonder if most people are together simply because they are afraid of the loneliness that surrounds them. Working in a winery, I see couples come in everyday and I wonder what percentage are happy or just merely content. Many appear to be doing well, or maybe they've been drinking wine and wine makes everything lovely and everyone lovelier. Maybe people need a little bit of blindness to care for the person sleeping beside them.
And so it is, I'm tired of this pattern I've fallen for - actually several times... though for the sake of brevity, I'll leave writing about them for another occasion. At least having this post I can come back to it, read my thoughts, hopefully avoid my next disappointment with myself. These words are my own testament and having written them will no doubt sustain my awareness, reminding me not to be weak but strong in my approach. I've been lonely before but I would rather be on my own than be with someone I have no honest affection for.
This I can truly state.
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