Breakups

Most relationships break up, and even more so experience at least one breakup (and sometimes the two looneys come back).

I don't think the pianist has been counting, but since I like numbers, I have been counting. To do that I have to make up a starting date. I use Labor Day, when she finally let me in her bed, let me kiss her. Now looking back, it seems a little less than accurate. That's because, as I have mentioned in the past entries, I haven't been very intimate with her, and not even a real kiss, since Labor Day. Of course, at some point, it doesn't matter. Hopefully we will stay long enough that the starting point is only useful for the good man to remember the "anniversary" that is all so kitsch in this society.

But the counting is mentioned for a reason here. Not even three weeks we broke up.

And it took a few hours, a long long train ride made long because of the imbecilic A train's mechanical problem (again), and some tears and some hugs, it took all this to bring back smiles, calm the worried heart. It also looks suspiciously familiar. The pattern is me feeling insecure, sends out some email expressing some dire conclusion based on my insecurity, and the result is the other person feeling inadequate because she's obviously the cause of my insecurity, and then she takes a step from me. In this case, the step is huge and her written response ends with the familiar, "I hope you find a woman that would truly make you happy; you deserve that."

I filed a formal complaint the night before, after she came to visit me and had dinner with me that I made for us. We had a good time, as usual, but I felt a need to complain to her on the topic that I mentioned in the past blog entries and hinted again above. I complained that we are more like close friends than a couple because we don't do very much in bed. I said it simply, while she is very trusting of me, feels very comfortable with me, the one exception is in bed, where she puts a big tall wall around her. She didn't have anything interesting to say. She knew what I was talking about and could do nothing about it. I told her in such relationship there is a man and a woman, but in ours there doesn't seem to be such distinction.

She gave me a very tight hug before boarding the famous 7-train. That hug didn't help much. I just got more upset. So as the pattern goes, I couldn't sleep, and the feelings of righteousness and self-pity mixed together into an email where I asked her to come back and be a woman. She didn't take that well, and thought I set up an ultimatum. The drama is predictable, and so is the resolution.

One good thing that came out of this was that I realized how much I like her, how much I want her to be in my life, when I came so close to losing her. Another positive outcome is that because she wants to take things slow, as opposed to all her previous crazy speedy adventures with me, it would mean I am not under pressure to spend all my time with her. I can actually do my own things in New York and she would not be more likely to leave me. And I realized she really likes me. She's being crazy when she overreacted and decided to break up with me on email (wow!). She's been hurt too much and I have to be extra careful not to let my insecurity push her away.

So yes, I went all the way up to there to at the very least break up in person. But we made up. I wish we didn't need drama as a way to get closer faster. I let her go back to her piano practice for a major recording the next day for some video audition, and I myself went back down to the center to get some tango dancing. She came later that evening and I danced a little with her. I was happy to see her. It was sweet for her to tell me she was looking for me when she arrived, and that she was a little disappointed thinking I wasn't there.

There's a part of me that says it's not enough that we just share a bed together as if we were friends. That especially in this day and age and in the beginning of the relationship, the couple should be "doing it" everyday, as a friend of mine told me (she used a more crude version of the phrase!). This part of me thinks that I deserve better, I deserve a woman that would give me that. And I did get women that did that for me, one even seemed to really made me feel great, very manly. But none of them liked me as much as this pianist. And if symbols and words matter, none of them acknowledged that we were dating, as the pianist acknowledges. If I have to weigh the good and bad, the happy and sad, the hopes and disappointments, than everything becomes super complicated and everyday becomes another episode of drama. The simplest and probably most difficult thing to do is enjoy what I have, and not focus on what I don't have that, frankly, even if I have it, brings me very short-term joy.

Sometimes you have to earn the best stuff on earth. To open her doors, to be allowed into her world, I need to earn it with time and patience. Only, of course, if she's worth it. Somehow somewhere in me I feel she's worth it. She makes my whole body, literal and figurative parts, giggle. That's good enough a reason to stay. I have felt the same way for others in the past and they all turned out to be the wrong choices. Still, if I am going to focus on how good a choice this person is, I won't be able to focus on enjoying those inner and outer giggles.