We met again on Friday. Before we slept together, we sat on the couch and talked for about two hours. During the conversation, we talked about love, and you said you actually believe most in love that develops slowly, after knowing someone for a long time. You said that when people fall in love quickly at the beginning, it makes them rush into marriage and having children, only for the love to fade over time. Then they discover they’re no longer right for each other and get divorced.
I sat there thinking, “Well, then let’s fall in love with each other, slowly!” (Even though I’ve pretty much been in love with you since the moment we met.) But I kept quiet. I asked if you had been in love with your ex from the beginning, and you said no.
Rotem Markman
(Photo: Courtesy)
“Were you in love with her by the end?” I continued.
“No,” you said.
“Were you in love with her at any point in your relationship?”
“No,” you said again.
“Then why were you with her?”
“Because I felt comfortable with her.”
I thought to myself that maybe the people we don’t feel comfortable with are actually the ones we’re most likely to fall in love with, because there’s a certain tension between us. But again, I kept quiet.
You went on to ask whether I felt comfortable with you. I said yes. Then you asked whether I trusted you. I said partly, because both times we talked about having a child together, you got cold feet and disappeared.
I asked whether you felt comfortable with me and whether you trusted me. You said yes to both, but I knew you were lying to me.
Then I realized something
All these years, I never understood what you saw in your ugly ex, whom you said several times you weren’t attracted to and couldn’t climax with. You simply felt comfortable with her. You were comfortable with her, but not with me. You trusted her, but not me.
Suddenly, your answers didn’t seem so bad. Maybe there are people we don’t feel comfortable around precisely because we care what they think of us. Because we don’t want to look stupid or bad in front of them. Because it’s hard for us to be ourselves around them.
You also talked about trusting each other. I didn’t ask what you meant, but maybe you meant fidelity? Maybe you trusted your ex because you didn’t think she would cheat on you, but you don’t trust me in the same way?
Afterward, we slept together and you almost fell asleep at my place, and I prayed that you would. That we would wake up together in the morning, have coffee and keep talking. But eventually you woke up.
We sat on my couch, smoked our post-sex cigarette and talked a little more. Then you left because your son was home with friends and you needed to get back to them. We said goodbye with a kiss.
On Saturday, I knew I was facing another two or three months of waiting until the next time you wrote to me. I didn’t have the patience for it, so I decided to tell you how I felt.
“Listen, it’s starting to get hard for me to just be your friend with benefits and only see you once every two months.”
I sent another message: “You don’t want anything more than this, right?”
I waited half an hour, and then you replied to something else I had asked earlier.
“What about this?” I wrote, replying to the message in which I had said it was getting hard for me to just be your friend with benefits.
Another half-hour passed before you replied with a single word: “I understand.”
“If you’re not on the same page, then maybe we should stop seeing each other,” I wrote.
I knew you wouldn’t respond to that.
And you didn’t.