On a day when everything in the city is closed for a public holiday, my son wakes up unwell. He screams words that spell out every parent’s nightmare : “Mom my legs hurt, I cannot walk !”. I try to swallow my panic and go through the motions of going to work. He is off school today, but I have to go to the office and the deadlines are piling up on me.  I instruct the nanny to give him some pain medication, then I leave for work after I help him out of bed to the sofa. I try to tell myself it is just a muscle cramp. At the office, I attempt to prioritize and meet my most pressing deadlines, and as the day progresses, I check on my son who reports the same pain. I am now really scared, so I call the doctor on his mobile. His office is closed for the holiday but the worry in my voice gave him enough cause for concern and he made an appointment for today. I take the hobbling boy to the doctor who gives him a thorough check, and cautiously calms my fears. Watch him tonight, he says, this is probably the result of the viral infection he had, and should clear up by itself with pain medication. If not, he would need to go into hospital for further tests including a spinal tab. Looking at my son I was inclined to believe him.  The boy was calm and did not scream at all when the doctor prodded and pressed his calves and legs. Whereas this morning he screamed at my mere touch on his legs.

When the panic passed and I had time to myself I sat in the courtyard of the mall, while my son attended music lesson. I let waves of exhaustion and self-pity wash over me. I always have to do it all, and there is really nobody to help carry the load. My only staff member is a meek little Kenyan woman who is more cowed than motivated by criticism. She drives me crazy with her defeatist victim attitude, and her fear of making mistakes hampers her judgement. I always have to tell her exactly what I want, and she gets stumped if there was a need deviate from the standard. It is often easier to do the job myself than to give instructions in such minute detail.

I am also away from most of my friends and family, and at moments of sheer panic, I cannot call on a mother or a friend who lives thousands of miles away, and sometimes in a different timezone. Such a call will only worry people I care about and will do little to help me. At moments like this I really feel the need for a true partner who carries at least part of the load.

Most of my male friends, including Aquarius, are allowed to under-appreciate their partners. I know of one whose partner, according to him, organizes his complicated life. This enables the man to work late, engage in sporting activities, and have loads of leisure time to spare for himself or with company.  Meanwhile, I steal the time to have a little jog from my son, who gets what is left over after my work is done. He protests bitterly when I have to work weekends or at a night. And to get my attention and care he sometimes steps up his level of complaining about problems, pain, hunger, and general bad moods.

During this past week I was received with problems the moment I stepped into the house. The sick child complained while the house-help stood helplessly silent, waiting for me to find a magical solution for everything that went wrong at home that day. I just wanted to crawl under some rock and escape from it all. The stress at work, with the help and with the sick child got to me so badly.  Never before had I wished more for a dependable boring but sympathetic and helpful partner. I would choose to love such a person, regardless of age, looks, and sexual prowess. This is preferable to an exciting but unhelpful lover, and definitely way better than my pseudo-lover.

Last week I finished listening to an audio book by Kim Wright, The Last Ride To Graceland.  Near the end of the book a character muses about his relationships with his very much loved, but now deceased, wife. He realizes belatedly that “there is more to being a good husband than loving a woman. Loving the woman is the easy part, the hard part is seeing her as she really is, and letting her be all those things, even the ones that are not particularly convenient…”.  The quote spoke to me, love is really the easy part, and while most of us women understand this, and are prepared to give support and freedom in equal measure to those we love, it is not a natural thing for men to do the same.

I was once a helpful and dutiful wife, under-appreciated and unloved. I carried my share of the load, I earned my keep, and I helped my partner achieve his dreams and got almost nothing in return. Many women around me do the same without thinking. Men are happy to take this support, the good ones try to reciprocate it with some support, affection, and/or material generosity.  There are men who are helpful and supportive in varying degrees, and those who allow their women some freedom, if they stand to benefit in some way.  But no man I know can aspire to the level of giving and support that women are naturally capable of providing. While men usually equate love to possessiveness, women allow their men to experience their lives in full. They wait in the margins, keeping all the tiny pieces of daily life in order. They give their men freedom to achieve bigger things, or experience more leisure. Unfortunately for me, the little chaotic pieces are the sum total of my daily life. If I go down, there is nobody to pick them up for me.

True love is having someone to lean on. And at times like this I can only turn to friends and family. I spent some hours talking to my mom, and to my best friend. I got some well-needed sympathy, and the proverbial virtual pat on the shoulder across thousands of miles and many time-zones. The women in my life understand how hard it is, they get me, while most men around me clearly don’t.

 

In a relationship like mine it is easy to feel isolated and left out. Apart from our coffee my pseudo-lover is almost never there when I need him, and it does hurt.

At the very start of our coffee dates, Aquarius texted me once suggesting lunch at our usual spot. Since it was a cold and wintry day, he thought that we might change the outdoor venue. He asked where I would like him to take me, and I answered “Out in the cold is fine. I am used to it”. I added a wink emoji for good measure, because even that early in our acquaintance, less than two months after our first meeting, I felt that I will be figuratively left out in the cold in this relationship. He missed the double meaning of course. I was also wrong, I was not used to it, and I don’t think I will ever be.

When he is out there working, playing, socializing, or keeping a low profile on social media to ensure his free time is not hijacked by intrusions of officialdom, I am the first one to be left out in the cold. I know this and I expect this, and I normally never impose on those times when I know he is busy, at play or with family.

There are times, however, when I desperately need a kind word. When I need to share some fear, concern, pain or triumph, and  I cannot even reach out to the person I care about most. Last weekend was such a time when my son was down with a frightful upper respiratory tract infection that left him feverish, nauseous, and in a lot of pain. We were both sleepless for two nights. I spent most of my time administering medicine and water, cleaning up after messes, and encouraging a child who kept proclaiming “the worst sickness ever” and “how can something so small bring a human to his knees?”  – his exact words. By day two of this, my courage was failing, and I feared the antibiotic was not working.  When one evening Aquarius sent a message telling me of his latest feat, I responded with my normal positive tone, and told him in passing about my vigil next to my child’s sickbed, I was desperate for someone to care. He never responded or even saw the message and I felt so alone. I did not expect a callback, just a quick note in reply. This came two days later, stale like everything else in my life, when he finally had the time.

I spent one of the worst weekends in my life and if it weren’t for my parents who asked regularly about my son I would have felt desperately isolated. I know this is what it is like to be the other woman. But I am not truly the other woman, I am just a coffee date. And sometimes I question what am I really getting out of this relationship except a little coffee and a lot of heartbreak.

 

Since my accidental fall, I have often asked myself what triggers falling in love, and what indeed if anything makes you fall out of it.

Since last week I have managed to identify a few mood-killers when it comes to loving feelings. I did this revisiting my handful of failed relationships, and the only one I still treasure in memory. Each person will have a different set of emotion killers but for me the biggest interference comes from duty and guilt. Other big factors are the behavior of my love interest. My New York relationship was killed instantly by his excessive control and a pathological mistrust, that cast doubt on my integrity and principles. In my marriage, on the other hand, the loving feelings bled out slowly by insidious emotional abuse. My ex was a master at making me feel unworthy and inadequate. He even made me believe at some point that I was the dead-weight preventing him from reaching the heights of his destiny. It took me almost a decade to get a backbone and meet my destiny instead of languishing at his side. He turned out to be the dead-weight I was carrying.

Duty and guilt featured strongly in my two earlier relationship. My first innocent love was crushed against my duty towards my faith (as idiotic as this may sound to my current middle aged agnostic persona). I still cherish the memories of that first love, because my offense against my faith or my creator remained a victimless crime, and there is really nothing wrong in loving an atheist, I have almost become one myself.

In contrast, I have blocked all memories of my first boyfriend. We lived our love in secret away from the harsh judgment of society. Hiding away at my side was his last attempt at avoiding an inevitable marriage to his fiance of many years. Duty caught up with him in the end, and guilt drove me away. I felt guilty over my lies, that I wronged the other woman, disgraced my family, and went against my tradition by loving someone from outside my “tribe”.

I remember when I recounted the stories of my disappointing love-life, one of my girlfriends pointed out to me the prominence of guilt in my life. For all the guilt I needlessly carry, she said, I should have been a catholic. And indeed, some people can sin guilt-free while I invariably end up with sin-free guilt. And this is where I have ended up with my current strange relationship. Last week I decided to put the crazy twin of my Gemini personality in her box. My relationship with Aquarius II should never have left the friend-zone, and if I felt stale, guilty and cheap from a throwaway comment he made, then I know that I would completely hate myself if the relationship ever went to the next level.  I now know that it is not going to happen, ever, not in 2019, and not on my next decade birthday. It is simply not going to happen this lifetime.

Words that were said last week did not change the way I feel. I still carry the same desperate and hopeless emotion in my heart. And I also know that there was no ill-intent behind them at all. They served as triggers that flummoxed my crazy half and woke up the reasonable one. After some thought, the latter strongly expressed itself, and decided that it was unfair to continue stoking the emotional fires, and indulging an impossible hope. I know that part of me will remain crazy about this man for a long time, but our close friendship has become very important to me, and I would rather keep it for the long-term than trade it for a temporary tryst that will make me lose him forever.

So for now, we will continue drinking coffee, but the invisible shadow of his partner and my son will sit next to me at the table. The content of the conversation has to remain appropriate for our invisible audience. This is the only way I can shake off my guilt. In time, I will be ready to introduce real audience to the table and bring this strange connection back to the friend zone. Will this make fall out of love with Aquarius II? I have to wait and see.