Not in love

I got a massage last night. Tim took me so he could get an adjustment first, and when we got there, the chiropractor was on the phone. For a while. After, she told us she had tracked down an old boyfriend whom she hadn't talked to in eight years.

I could tell she was slightly giddy about reconnecting with him, because she talked about him and their conversation during the entire massage, and she usually doesn't say that much to me. I was "uh-huh"-ing and asking questions as she told me how they'd had a tempestuous relationship when she was 18 and he was 31, and how he broke her heart by letting her go, and how later his wife made him give up all friendships with women, so she couldn't even have that friendship in her life.

He asked her, during this last conversation, if there was anything she would have done differently. It was clear that he was angling for her to say she wished they had never broken up, or that they had gotten back together later. She said, no, that she was happy with where she was, and what life had brought. And I murmured an affirmation to that.

Then she said, "I'm not in love. I wish I was."

I didn't have a response.

I'm not sure how you respond to something like that. If I had voiced the thoughts in my head, it would have been, "I am so very sorry." Sorry because I knew she was married, and knew she was settling for comfort and stability instead passion.

Is it naive of me to think that? The only thing I know for certain is that I instantly felt trapped for her. In my experience of being with people I was not in love with, that's the claustrophobic feeling I always had when I thought about being with any of those people for the rest of my life.

In fact, I had always been scared of marriage and any sort of "forever" ideas because I would fantasize about my life with whatever current boyfriend I had. After an envisioned five years in the future, a blackness would rise up and I couldn't even daydream about it. I wanted to run, to shake off the feeling of doom that I saw settling into my life.

I suppose it goes without saying that with Tim, I saw light there, in my future.

I told him about this, how I understand that relationships change, and can cool, and--he cut me off with a raised eyebrow. I need him to remind me, for I forget, and sometimes worry, but at the heart, I know, regardless of its manifestation, we will always have a passionate connection.

But my chiropractor, I think it hurt me so much because of the I wish I was. Regardless of what kind of awareness one might have (maybe some have decided passion isn't worth as much as stability, so they wouldn't regret their choice), the longing has to be the hardest part.