I’ve heard almost nothing from Debbie in the last week – one brief e-mail Monday morning to answer one of mine over the weekend, and then total silence – but I’ve spent some more time thinking and I see what might be another contributing cause to her calling it quits. Remember that everything I write here is shit I made up out of my own head: it’s all based on things I heard her say (or thought I heard her say), but none of it came out of her mouth viva voce. So there’s every chance it could all be wrong.
But I wonder if part of her having to call it off was because the two-hour distance between us put her on an emotional roller coaster. Say (for example) we go two weeks without seeing each other and then have a weekend together. In that two weeks she gets pretty used to me not being around. Then suddenly it’s Friday night, we’re together, and I’m ready to pick up at exactly the same level of intimacy where we left off. Only Debbie can’t change gears that fast. She feels awkward around me and spends all of Saturday re-adjusting, meanwhile nudging me subtly to back off a bit and slow down. By Sunday morning she finally gets back to where we were last time … to where I was trying to be when I climbed out of my car Friday night. So we spend Sunday together in the rosy halo of adoring each other. And then Sunday evening rolls around, … and suddenly I have to climb back into my car to drive two hours back to my apartment because I have to be at work first thing Monday morning. So then Debbie feels the pain of separation for days, like a kick in the stomach. She pines. She sighs. She e-mails me, and we talk on the phone. One way or another she suffers a lot. But after a few days she starts to get used to me not being there, and pulls herself out of it.
Rinse. Repeat.
When I look at it that way, I can easily believe that it would get old fast. It also helps me understand why she kept talking as if she wanted us to be in a more quasi-married state – living together or right next door – even though consciously we both agreed that there were a bunch of reasons it was impractical for us to marry. But after all, if I lived there then she wouldn’t have to lurch back and forth between two different emotional worlds. She admitted early on that she’s not good at compartmentalizing, and that it’s not something she wants to get good at. She thinks compartmentalizing is a bad way to run your life. Only, … if you are conducting a long-distance romantic relationship, compartmentalizing is awfully useful. It saves you a lot of pain.
This evening I also realized why she might not want to communicate with me. Remember back before we started fucking, when we were just having lunch together a lot? We both felt this huge emotional attraction … that’s part of why, even though all her principles told her to wait a couple of years (or more), she was willing to fall into bed with me after only a couple of months. We had that effect on each other.
Well, suppose that now she’s in the situation where her heart is careening back and forth between two extremes, much the way I just described above. She decides – intellectually, I mean – that the only cure is to detach herself from me. But the heart is never so clever as the intellect. Her heart is probably still crashing back and forth between extremes. So, … what’s going to happen if we start talking? If we meet for lunch, or talk on the phone, or e-mail back and forth? She knows perfectly well what’s going to happen, because it’s exactly what happened a year ago under the same circumstances. Only this time she can’t allow it. So this means avoiding the situations that could elicit that response, much as an alcoholic on the wagon stays out of bars.
This might be all wrong, but it makes a kind of sense. And it means I have to be more generous in my heart towards her silence. It may be the only thing she thinks she can do ….
If I still love her – which I do – I have to let her have that.
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