Models of Love
I keep getting burned in the most unfair and excruciating ways
Last week I accidentally burned my chest while using my Aeropress. I thought, “Wow, what a beautifully painful metaphor for my love life.” I keep getting burned in the most unfair and excruciating ways.
When I was a pre-teen, I wanted to fall in love so badly. I didn’t care or think about how much it could hurt when it ended.
Boys were mostly uninterested in me, which seemed to make me even more interested in them. I was not seen or thought of, and I badly wanted to be seen and thought of.
I didn’t grow up with any realistic models of romantic love. My parents divorced when I was young—too young to ever remember them being in love and too young to ever remember them falling out of it. Both sets of my grandparents’ love seemed, at times, forced, harsh, rigid—an obligation; and it probably was to some extent, given their generational culture. Both of my parents had partners after the divorce, but my mom’s partner was abusive to her and us kids, and my dad’s partners were fun, but lacking in emotional depth.
Thus, my models of love mostly consisted of romantic comedies. Movies like, “It Takes Two,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “One Fine Day.” I wanted what I saw in these movies. I wanted my parents back together. I wanted a long, big love for myself. I placed such an emphasis on romantic, heteronormative love. It was burned into me by society and the media I consumed. Like most little girls, I grew up wanting the fairytale, the fantasy, the unattainable.
In my 20s, I noticed men finally seeing me. I went out with any and everyone, and was in some truly dangerous situations because my thirst, my hunger for even the potential of love was so big. But it was also about wanting to feel wanted. I felt addicted to that yearning. I felt haunted by my desire to see how another, typically a man, would gaze at me. The male gaze was my kryptonite. They/we would get what we wanted and I could feel the imperceptible shift happen. And then an emptiness.
Even today, as I write this, I still get a dopamine hit when I flirt with people on dating apps. But there is an emptiness that comes quickly; there is a soft void.
I have had three big loves in my life. The first was someone I met in college. He has been my longest relationship, even though we have never formally dated. I didn’t even know I was in love with him until many years later. Love is funny that way. It might be unhealthy, and unfair to both of us, but I typically message him whenever I’m single. He refers to this as my “Bat-Signal.” We can never be together in any real way (for a variety of reasons), but we share an immense love for each other. I have been talking to him again as of late, and he knows exactly how to care for the parts of me that feel unloved, mistreated, and unseen.
The first time I ever fell in love (and was cognizant of it)—like, really fell hard and fast, was when I was 27. I had dated heaps of people before that point, but nobody I had felt a deep, burning, aching for. This man ended up sexually assaulting me, cheating on me, and giving me herpes. Needless to say, this love was confusing and chaotic. I thought it was one thing, but it turned monstrous at the end. I guess even love can have a monstrous gaze.
My third biggest love was my last long-term relationship, which ended almost a year ago. I found a consistency, a reliability, a safety in him that I never knew could exist. He was certainly not perfect. Hindsight is a great teacher, and looking back I see how little, if at all, he adjusted his life for me; when I over-adjusted my life for him. There were circumstances beyond either of our control that led to the death of our relationship. But I still don’t have closure. I still don’t understand why he chose the path he chose. I am still trying to stitch together that tapestry with a thread that no longer exists.
I am lucky for these loves. They are lucky to have experienced me. I have loved and lost. I have been made better for it.
I am fortunate to have experienced such exquisite depth—
in grief,
in anger,
in love.
🎉 Things of the Week
I binged Yellowjackets season 1 and the first two episodes of season 2 and holy shit… such a good show!
Ava Wanbli builds a self-reflexive world of trans ecstatic kink in “Sertraline Dolls”
Female cardinals—more understated than the males, but I think more elegant
Take a Lesbian for a Drink: On 50 Years of Rita Mae Brown’s “Rubyfruit Jungle”
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