Amore No More

Well maybe it wasn't really "amore" after all. Maybe more a matter of convenience, of going for what's in front of you in life. Sometimes the way to get ahead in life, if you've been in a 'drought' situation(whether in your employment or your love life)is to take the first "yes" you get and go from there. The "yes" you respond to may turn out to be your dream job or dream person and end up fulfilling all or at least most of your needs in this area.

Or maybe it won't.

If it doesn't look like it's going to fit the bill, if there's more potential unhappiness than happiness, then you would do well to exit the relationship. This depends of course on how much time and energy you have invested. In my marriage, I hung in there and hung in there and hung in there some more, until it was finally evident that we at least needed some time away from one another. We talked about reconciling, but I decided not to, figuring that we'd get into the same arguments, the same power-plays, all the same stuff that drove us apart in the first place. Best to just keep going and not look back.

This current relationship was just a couple of months. Many phone calls and emails and a handful of get-togethers. She came into my life during what was a tough time for me. I had some health issues, some things with me that needed fixing, over which I was a bit apprehensive. One of the things I had to tend to earlier in the year was cataract surgery, something she'd already been through. This was implicitly reassuring, the fact that she'd already covered the ground I was afraid to walk over, the hot coals of my uncertainty. Plus she was an intelligent person, seemed to be well-educated and not without her charms.

I should probably add here that this was an internet meeting, from a dating site we both subscribed to, and that she initiated the relationship. She wrote first, and I decided to go for it. An attractive person, as it turned out, a bit tall for my taste, but I decided to try and overcome my prejudice in this area.

And I have, at 5'4" , been the recipient of height prejudice(in the other way of course), so I was thinking something along the lines of not doing unto her as I've been done unto. And with that, speaking of 'amore no more', maybe I was even thinking past her already(before even starting off), hoping that my lack of prejudice here would somehow karmically affect some woman down the road into a similar attitude toward me. Some short woman would pick me over some tall guy.

So for whatever reason or reasons, however convoluted or just pathetically chimerical, I decided to look past the height differential. She's intelligent and clever and attractive, and very complimentary towards moi, always telling me I'm gorgeous(believe me, I know I'm not, but it's nice to hear)and so forth. And it's a time when I'm most vulnerable, looking at friggin' eye surgeries and all that entails. What's not to go for here?

Naturally, as you get to know someone, you learn all the crap they carry around with them. All their problems, whether familial, social, physical or mental. Mainly door number 3 here, which of course can open up door number 4 on occasion. Well we've all got our problems, our issues, whatever door they come out of. I certainly have mine, but try to manage 'em.

Her health problems(which I will not enumerate here--protecting the innocent and all that)are from all indications, pretty serious. At times, they're incapacitating. There were occasions where she'd have to leave here to go home and take pain medications. She had her good days and bad days with all this, but mobility was definitely an issue.

The mobility was of course most apparent when we were out together. I am(at least so far)more of the Speedy Gonzalez school: a peripatetic, zippin'-around kinda guy, and she was cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez, so I had to slow it wayyyy down. This plus the height difference(about 5 inches)made me a bit uncomfortable. Us out in the world was perhaps something I could've adjusted to eventually, but it didn't feel good.

Most of our get-togethers were spent seated, as it turned out- either out to dinner or on the couch at my place, usually the latter as time went on. I have one room in my house which is designed solely for TV viewing. It's a small room with French Doors and a giant TV in it which kinda dwarfs everything else. Oh, and a threadbare couch barely big enough for one person, let alone two. So our relationship sort of morphed into an event we called "movie night", which consisted of watching movies and such snuggled on said threadbare couch.

A very compartmentalized relationship, but as compartments go, not too shabby. Movie night was fun, it was something I enjoyed as well. I think it might have worked over a longer term had it moved from its PG rating into something beyond the point of parental guidance, could've stayed compartmentalized but as movie and sex night. For that matter, that could almost work indefinitely, provided you had both good movies and good sex...

What's most important to me in a relationship, even more than height and physical infirmities is the fact that it's a two-way street. I show you mine, you show me yours. It is part of things(see earlier paragraph)but I'm not just talking genitalia. If you know where I live, where I work and have met my friends, I should in turn know your address and where you work(or what you do to pay for yourself, or who pays for you). Seems only fair to me. If this kind of reciprocity is not going on in the relationship, then it's like the brown-skinned baby born to Chinese parents.

Sum Ting Wong.

So I decided to exit this relationship. A difficult thing to do, because I don't want to hurt her feelings. But despite the cool things about her, it just wasn't a good fit for me, at least after awhile. I think for me it just ran its course. There are things and people in your life that show up at certain opportune times, to serve a certain purpose, and I think that was the case here: to alleviate anxiety about my surgeries and to provide female companionship, something I hadn't had in awhile. And to provide companionship for her-something she hadn't had in awhile.

A relationship, it seems, is sort of an organism in itself. If you have one part out of whack, and everything else is running smoothly, the organism will compensate for it. If it's not running smoothly otherwise, if there's no homeostasis, then that one part will continue to fester and plague you. In this case it was the height difference- which, if all else were cool, would've probably made less and less difference to me. But as it was, with other stuff in there, it kinda nagged me.

So I'm back on the open market. Fortunately this woman was cool about everything, no craziness or histrionics. She thanked me for the time we had. Thank you right back, it was good for me too- maybe not for the long pull, but for what it was, you bet. And I'm glad I provided you with companionship as well, something you needed. Hope you can find someone who's a better fit for you, who can pick up where I left off.

We'll see what, if anything, life throws at me in the way of another female. It'll be what it is. I think I have a bit more to bring to it, now having had this one. For one thing, I had somebody tell me I was 'gorgeous'...