Modern Love

Marge Sherwood: The thing with Dickie… it’s like the sun shines on you, and it’s glorious. And then he forgets you and it’s very, very cold.
Tom Ripley: So I’m learning.
Marge Sherwood: When you have his attention, you feel like you’re the only person in the world, that’s why everybody loves him so much.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

I have never had any interest in catch and release. Have you ever tried to remove a hook from a fish? It’s a living, frightened thing that isn’t about to hold still and cooperate. The whole process is bloody, and scary, and there’s a really good likelihood that you’ll both get hurt. 

I was only twenty when I settled into a relationship with the man who would become my first husband. He was a friend of one of my uncles and we’d already been at least acquaintances for nearly half my life. For someone who wanted to do ALL the things, I don’t have a lot of dating experience.

My life moves slowly, but still it manages to move. I’ve been enough places to miss where I was. More accurately, to miss who I was with. I have all of these clusters of friends who are so dear to my heart, in places where I’m not anymore.

The internet, social media, too many apps, it all helps me to maintain these connections. Even geographically isolated, I can still hang out with the people I love. I’m especially keen on virtual spaces where I can lurk, witnessing conversations without having to participate directly.

I do the same thing at work, puttering around the kitchen invisibly while the instructors discuss fascinating theories amongst themselves. These passive connections mean so much to me. I want to be in the room where it happens, but mostly as a fly on the wall. I love the joy of a little ding, a notification turning on my screen, reminding to peep into one of those rooms.

Meeting people virtually though, like dating strangers from my phone, that’s just crazy talk. The dating world is very different now from how it was before I got married. I could never navigate a world of swiping this way or that. Picking out a person, potentially my person, from some superficial profile questions and a selfie? Egads, no.

My M.O. is just to spend roughly a decade getting closer and closer to someone until I decide I can’t stand to be apart anymore. The problem is that my Work Bestie and I were thousands of miles apart when I decided this about him. There has always been an element of long distance in our relationship. When it started, we were both in Southern California but a hundred miles apart. Then I moved to Northern California, and we were five-hundred miles apart. My summer in Portugal was more than just miles. It was an entirely different time zone.

We were doing okay before I got Covid, but part of that was that I really wasn’t sleeping enough. I was getting up early for Portugal stuff and staying up late for California stuff, and experience tells me that this sort of schedule is part of how I got sick. While I was sick, and recovering, I started sleeping more, and we ended up talking less.

In Lisbon, I became nocturnal. To avoid the heat, I stayed up later and later. Also, I was hoping that the Work Bestie and I would find time to talk. I was eager to get back on California time, back in sync with my man. He told me that July is the busiest time of his work year, and I never want to nag anyone into paying attention to me, but I was finding it very difficult to be patient.

I tried being light, sending texts like if he maybe wanted to call me after work later, I wouldn’t hate it. I tried being more forward, sending texts explicitly stating that I’d be in my room alone and hoping he would call. I tried being spontaneous and saying I’d love to talk now if he’s free. I sent explicit pics hoping more primal instincts would spark some kind of urgency in him. Nothing. He was working late, except for all the nights he didn’t even bother to give me a reason. 

The separation felt so complete, like more than miles and time zones. It felt like I was adrift in the silence of outer space, and I had to take it on faith that my long tether was still attached to something at the other end. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so far away from him.

Faith is really hard. It is definitely not what I do best. I’m a storyteller at heart, and I’d get lost in my own catastrophizing. The antidote is hard evidence. Long distance leans too much on faith. I hated it when he was like that, but at least it was familiar. The summer of ’21 had been rough on our relationship, too. I hate the disappearing act. Years of experience proved that he always came back.

It still sucked, though. The worst thing about getting involved with my best friend was not knowing who to complain to when the guy I was seeing was being a cootie-buttbrain. I wanted my love, but I needed my friend. Also, there’s almost always some work thing that ends up back-burnered until it catches fire because I’m still waiting for this colleague’s feedback before proceeding. When he’d disappear like that I’d have to scramble to make do without one-third of the core leadership team at work, without my significant other, and without my best friend, all at the same time. It was really rough.

I didn’t know how I would pay for it, but I was determined to start making regular flights to visit him until I graduated. I signed up for a rewards program on an airline with frequent, almost reasonably-priced flights. Maybe we could alternate, with me going down one month and him coming up the next, so we could spend a weekend together every month until I graduated.

We have our best talks working, walking, running errands, cuddled up together. It’s easier to talk when you aren’t making a point of talking, but you’re just sort of existing in the same space. My favorite conversations were just the looks between us, like passing notes in class, “you saw that, right?”

The more time we spent together, the closer we got, and the easier it was to be us. Momentum matters. Relationships thrive when there are shared observations and inside jokes and languish when there isn’t any opportunity to connect. I mean, this is pretty basic stuff.

I was determined we would spend more time together my senior year. After that, I would move back to Southern California. This was going to be the last summer I spent missing him. Long distance just isn’t sustainable, especially with a man who has no object permanence. It feels like everything out of sight is instantly out of mind with him.

It took such a long time to get to where we were. I don’t understand why couples no longer put a label on it, like acknowledging the relationship might jinx it. But there we were, going on five years since we’d started fooling around. The second longest relationship of my life, talking marriage, talking babies, but heaven forbid we talked about labels. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t call it. Over the years, we had built something magical, and I wasn’t going to carelessly let it fade away. 

This was my first time navigating a long-term relationship since the 90s. I’m not a fan of the prevalence of situationships, and other vagueries that seem to be the new standard. It’s weird to not just call a thing what it is. But I guess these are the times we’re living in.

Ringtones are one of the things that I like, though. I’d assigned special ringtones to the Work Bestie when we were still just friends. He had this infuriating habit of calling, and if you didn’t pick up, you might not be able to get a hold of him again for a month. This wasn’t just a problem I had. It was how he was with everyone. We all had to deal with this elusiveness.

I gave him special ringtones so I wouldn’t miss the call. As we became more than friends, even when my ringer was on silent, my screen would light up and I would glow. I’d be texting with the Work Bestie and my teenaged daughter would tell me to tell him hi. When I asked her how she knew who it was when the ringer was off, she said I only smiled like that with him.

His ringtone became my favorite love song, the sound of his texts an instant high. I was addicted to these sounds, and the withdrawal while I was in Portugal, was brutal. A thousand ways to communicate in this digital era and suddenly I couldn’t seem to connect with him on any of them.

Now you’ve disappeared somewhere
Like outer space
You’ve found some better place
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain

Everything But The Girl
Missing