This date reminds me of an old Groucho Marx joke, “We’ve had a wonderful evening; unfortunately, this wasn’t it.” She hasn’t put three sentences together since I picked her up. Her eyes are darting back and forth. Yeah, this can’t be good.
“You haven’t been very talkative tonight,” she remarks.
She always projects her mood onto me. “I was thinking about your dad. He doesn’t seem to like me.”
“He just worries about his ‘little girl.’ It’s important to him that I’m taken care of.”
“Do we have to talk about that again, right now?”
“Okay fine but you asked me about Dad.”
Ah, another misstep into anxious silence; part of our continuing dance around the inevitable. She knows I’m not one for ring-giving. Yet, hopefulness about our relationship periodically seeps in and disrupts equilibrium. Then make-believe gives way to reality and stinging disappointment ensues. After that, hopeless resignation returns.
For a while, she stopped comparing us to other couples. At first, I believed she had finally accepted our relationship for what it is. Later, I realized she was merely acknowledging that lingering together was preferable to arbitrarily staying apart. Now, I sidestep the commitment issue in order to preserve limbo. Maybe one day I’ll regret letting her drift away but that’s not enough to scare me into a proposal now. Why isn’t it good enough to just be together and enjoy one another? We live in different places; we have separate lives.
Every time I ask myself that question, there’s this little voice in my head that sounds a lot like hers, “Maybe what’s important is how much you’re willing to let yourself care. You have to risk really sharing your true and whole self. Otherwise, you’re just wasting time.” I hate that little voice. It always makes me feel guilty.
–B.M., Christmas Revisited: Three Wise Guys, a Lap (Dog?), and a Fat Dude in a Red Suit… — Novel Submission
Reader: An interesting point that many adults have experienced in different ways. Here we have a younger writer – just my guess – who sees the issue as being between a couple who are not yet a couple. Yes, there is a not-so-little voice that works for most of us some of the time about the need to share and commit. It is not only between lovers. It is between each other on a host of other levels: commitment to the vulnerable, to the sick, to the lonely. This writer is addressing an important issue.
