Suddenly, I sat at my kitchen table while he made cornbread and thought, “Oh, no. Then the visits were so nice that they became regular, then we spent four days together while my son was at his father’s over Thanksgiving break, and during that visit, when I had the beginnings of a cold, Rich walked my dog for me, brought me tea and cooked for me. Then I accepted a job 70 miles away, so it seemed OK for us to have sex “just one more time” before I moved, but then I wasn’t moving that far away, so it seemed OK if he came to visit occasionally. I started to want more, but our lives were incompatible, so we broke up and remained friends.
It takes a special kind of endurance to look at the train barreling down the tracks and say, “But what if it doesn’t hit me this time?” I don’t know if my endurance has served me well. I hesitated, then said, “For women, too often, I think what we mistake as resilience is actually just endurance.” Someone asked me once where I thought my resilience came from. I looked at him for a long time, then said, “But what if it doesn’t?” I just have a feeling that this is going to end terribly.” The first time that we almost broke up was when he came over and said, “I feel like we should break up. My marriage had made it hard for me to trust men, but I trusted Rich. He also didn’t try to charm, flatter or otherwise tell me what I wanted to hear, which was both disarming and strangely nice. He was strictly monogamous, and I never worried that he was seeing anyone else because he was honest - almost to a fault in how he routinely expressed his hesitations and doubts. The youngest of seven children, he was the family baby. Still, I enjoyed our time together and wanted it to last.Īs we grew to know each other, I learned that he was old-fashioned in matters of the heart. I knew that for a relationship to be serious, I needed someone who took care of me too.
We liked each other, but our dynamic was that I took care of him. These weren’t booty calls they were planned visits. It was intensely casual but also weirdly stable. That safe feeling wasn’t something I was used to.īecause I’m a divorced mother and protective of my son, I only let Rich visit when my boy was at his father’s house, so we saw each other every other weekend. I knew it was risky, but he was so sweet and earnest.
I invited him over, had sex with him, told him that we should do it again sometime and entered his number into my phone.
Tall and skinny with kind eyes, he felt safe to me, like someone I would never really fall for - not in the way where I lost control. He was sitting across a bar and looked like he was 25 (he turned out to be 32). All of those setbacks had turned me into a woman who was disillusioned, celibate and ready to give up. Then the wildland firefighter who chased me for years and disappeared when I was finally available. There was the former monk who abstained from everything, including sex, but when I stopped seeing him, he moved into a comfortable relationship with an acupuncturist. Years passed, and in my post-married life, the men flipping resumed. I wished a calmer marriage for her, which they appear to have achieved. At least not for me.Īfter our divorce, he married a woman a decade my junior, and I wondered if all the work I had done making him own up to his behavior and understand the need to change would mean that his new wife would be spared the mistreatment I received. We had a child together, but as hard as I tried, I was never able to fix him. I thought I had broken the pattern when I married, but the man who became my husband turned out to be mercurial and cruel.
HOUSE FLIPPER GAME BEFORE AND AFTER HOW TO
After those two heartbreaks, my friends joked that my secret talent was teaching men how to love someone - just not me.
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