The woman i'm in love with hits me over the head. "what i want is a man who's not like my father. my father was an infant. i have almost no memory of him ever acting competently."
then she shows me a list she wrote 30 years ago: all the qualities she was looking for in a man. it's three pages long, handwritten. as soon as she shows it to me, she decides not to share it. i urge her on.
"something from the middle of page two!" i suggest. she looks at page two and says nothing. " read that one!" i say, pointing to a line in the middle. something about the line jolts her. she reads "He will like food and cooking". and then she reads me the rest.
the rest sounds-if i do say so myself-a bit like a description of me and us. and this is when i realize that my neediness in this relationship has been undermining the strength of this relationship. i don't blame myself much, the potential for growth in contact with this woman is tremendous. i could see the me that i want to be growing out of it. that i became less of me in order to reach for more of me is just one of those little 'fuck you's from the irony angel.
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something else happens this weekend. we are getting closer, no, really closer. she tells me sweet things and i respond in my father's voice ratcheting down the emotions with a joke. between saturday night and sunday, i do this three times. the third time, she cries.
of course, i'm flabbergasted. i think i'm acknowledging the feeling while lightening the tone. giving the message wings and taking away some weight. she doesn't see it that way, it makes her feel less willing to share the really important stuff that's coming up for her.
since her intimacy is my new oxygen, i take this very seriously. i'm also disarmed: it's like finding out that your daily vitamin pill is giving you cancer.
to complicate things, she does this too! she writes me a sweet email on sunday afternoon saying that 'there will be no more of this reading the sunday times alone, not-negotiable'. the tone is light and sweet (reminds me of her coffee) and it makes me smile and it makes me feel wanted and it sends a message of more closeness. i reply
well, if you insist...feet up, coffee smells, smoked salmon and cream cheese roll-ups. i guess i could handle it. . . .
it feels to me that i've matched tone for tone, that i heard her voice and my heart called back in the same language. she calls me to make sure that i got the message that she really sent. poor lynn is misunderstood again.
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so let's put that one aside for the moment. the real question is 'what am i doing when i dilute the seriousness of what she's saying with a turn to glibness'? i need an answer because it's such an easy response for me and it hurts her feelings. i also need an answer that respects my needs as reflected in the glib gambit. i know i'm not being a jerk, there's something kind and good in that light response (i can feel it). but i have to undo it because it's not working.
i have two clues: one is that the voice is entirely my father's. the second is that it's a reflexive-no thought-response to some kind of discomfort. 'things are getting very serious here, better lighten them up'. i guess that's an adaptive response from some other time. when? what?
now i'm out of clues.
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at the gym, sometime around the 20th pull-up, it comes to me. i say that silly shit because there's nothing else in my experience. that would be a serious problem if i were looking for a recipe for trout. but i'm not. i'm looking to respond to the woman i'm in love with in a way that answers her genuine love with mine.
i could just wait for next time and go to the genuine love locker and pick out whatever comes up. but i think i'll be more chefly and get my mise-en-place together. i have a half hour before dog walk and i think i'll go to the cushion and see what arises. if it turns out that it's really blank in there, i will confess my blankness in the face of her love. i'll offer it up like a lamb.
and then we'll see what happens next, for in the end i always fill in the blanks.
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