I’m headed out on a date with Serena tonight. We’re going to Chemistry, and I’m struck by two related things, one of which is in some way, reaction to the other. So as compliant as Serena is in person – she’ll do anything I ask, precisely as I ask – when we’re not together, she is supremely unreliable. She overpromises, she underdelivers, she creates constant opportunities for me to have hopes and expectations which she crushes.
I’m struck by how, on the one hand, I see my historical reflex. I have it, but the feelings around it are so much softer, I’m so much more relaxed. I don’t have a good feel for the extent to which this is about my confidence in Serena’s affection for me, in my safety in the relationship, and the extent to which this is a shift in me – a willingness and an ability to tolerate discomfort of this sort.
Two hours ago, she told me that – an hour from then – she would give me options as to what she would wear tonight. About half an hour ago (so about ninety minutes after she first promised me the choice), I sent her a question mark. She had given me to understand that she was going to be otherwise occupied for the following hour, and I inferred that what originally started as an hour became an hour and a half or two hours, but after ninety minutes, I was ready to hear.
When, finally, after two hours, she gave me my options, what she gave me was a lazy, lackadaisical splaying of options on a bed. She knew what I would have liked. She knew I would have preferred to see three or four options, modeled for me, on her delicious body. And I would have liked it a day ago, or twelve hours ago, or six hours ago, or four hours ago, thank you very much. But she backed us into a corner where now I’m supposed to meet her in twenty minutes. I’m fifteen minutes from where we’re meeting. She’s five minutes from where we’re meeting. And she’s not responding to me in real time. So my ability to make a choice is somewhat constrained.
I’m angry.
Not angry.
I’m annoyed.
Not even, really, annoyed.
Actually? I’m mostly amused and just a tiny bit sad – in the way that one feels a twinge of sadness whenever anything in the world is any different than one might wish: when it rains on a Saturday, when I open the fridge and don’t find what I’m hoping to find. The valence of this particular sadness, in other words, feels low. Feels manageable. Feels like, you know, what humans feel when they’re in relationships with other humans who aren’t themselves all the time.
The honest truth is, whatever Serena wears will be fine. Her taste is sexy, hot. Her body is sexy, hot. The control I crave has more to do with the compliance – which she didn’t give me – than it does with the presentation of her very pretty body. Serena just chose to deprive me of that particular portion of this experience – one I would have liked to have.
In so many of my previous relationships, I organized them around the premise that, “Goddamnit, I’m going to get what I want. And we’re going to keep adjusting our communication until you promise something you can deliver. You exclude that which you can’t. And then you deliver me the delight of perfect compliance within those boundaries.” Of course, that’s never worked perfectly, and often, it’s been a path to real pain, suffering, even torture. (cf. Marina).
Serena cannot give me that perfect compliance unless we’re in person – and I seem to be okay with it.
Postscript: at dinner, we had a really useful, interesting conversation about all this – and, about how it relates to her fears of disappointing me. By the time our food arrived, I think we both felt pretty fucking fine about it all.