Love

L just made a sad post, that makes me sad.

I am an observer instead of a participant. It’s boring. And sad. As I feel.

Yesterday, we met for coffee, to talk, to catch up.  We see one another all the time.  That’s just how our lives are.  We’ve tried to continue flirting, to continue sending one another sexy missives from time to time, but the truth is, it doesn’t work, and we both know it.

It’s not that either of us has lost interest.  Would that it were so simple.

No, it boils down to the complexities of life in love with another.  L is married, I am married.  We live in the same (small) community, and all know one another, one another’s friends.  Three of the four of us are fine with L’s and my “thing” together.  But her husband isn’t.  He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t like it.  And there’s simply no way for L and me to continue in the face of his discomfort.

One of the hardest things I’ve done in life (and I continue to struggle with it daily) is to come to terms with the fact that my wife isn’t me, that she wants things I don’t want, that I want things she doesn’t want.  This isn’t unique to our marriage.  It’s just life in love.

There’s no one right answer to how to do this, but one thing’s for sure:  love is really hard until that Gordian knot – the reality that a marriage is two people with different desires, different hungers, different preferences, different needs – finds a (re)solution.

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