[Two Pronged] After all those years, still undecided

Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes. Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives. Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer,

Four years ago, I connected with my ex-boyfriend from high school (let’s call him M) through Facebook, and even though I had a boyfriend then, I felt excited about being able to communicate with him again. 

I don’t know exactly if this is the reason why things didn’t work out with my then bf. I continued communicating with M (he is separated and so am I). We went out together, played bowling, watched movies, sort of like dates but not really dates.

We agreed that it will be best that we remain just friends because our relationship now is better than when we were in high school. Although we agreed to be just friends, we were intimate a few times, something I decided to stop.

Last year, he had a stroke, I was the one he called to bring him to the hospital as he was scared. I was the one who took care of him, watched over him (during the day while his daughter stayed with him at night). And even when he was discharged from the hospital, I took care of him. I helped him bathe, change clothes, etc.  In short, I was his caretaker. 

Earlier this year, I started distancing myself, not sure why. I haven’t got tired of taking care of him but I felt that I had to do it for my own good. Lately, he’s been telling me he misses me, he even sent me a message telling me that he is not ready to tell me how he feels but that I make his everyday something to look forward to and worth living.

Now this is where my problem started, and it’s making me confused. I don’t know if he really feels something for me or he’s just dependent on me, so he thinks he feels something for me. I am even confused of my own feelings for him. I do care for him, I don’t deny that, but do I care for him because he’s my friend or is there more? 

What makes me more confused now that I had the need to ask for advice is that recently, a good friend of mine passed away and it made me think, what if M died, will I be able to move forward?

I don’t know, but it sort of woke me up and scared me a little to think that in his situation, if he won’t take good care of himself, he’ll end up six feet under the ground.

I know I seem to be babbling, my apologies. I need your opinion and advice, do you think I feel more than just friendship for him? And if I do, do you think I should tell him? I know we’re in a society that it’s fine for women to tell men of how they feel but I am not used to it, how do I go about it?

Thank you very much and your responses will be highly appreciated. 

Regards,

Confused

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Dear Confused 

Thank you for your letter.

Your account of this relationship clearly shows your confusion but possibly also carries within it the answer to your question about your feelings for M. 

Briefly summarized, you broke up with M in high school, then later became friends, were ‘intimate’ for a short while and then you decided just to be friends again. Then, when M had his stroke, you became his nurse but once he had recovered you distanced yourself from him again. For his part, all we know is that after all this he said he is not ready to tell you how he feels. 

What you need to ask yourself is why you have repeatedly got close to M only to break up with him. In addition, why is it that he, even after all this time, is still not ready to share his feelings with you? And are these two things somehow linked? After all, M would not be the first man to decide to keep his feelings secret from a woman who dumped him.

If you are beginning to have intimations of mortality, albeit M’s rather than your own, perhaps it’s time to move on rather than wait however many more decades it will take M either to die or to decide if he has “feelings” for you or not. After all, you have already declared your lack of true love for him not once, not twice, but three times. 

Best of luck,

Jeremy

 

Dear Confused, 

Thank you very much for your letter. I hope it’s ok with you, but I have chosen not to respond to your request to help you clarify your feelings for this man and his feelings for you. I think this would just be yet another wrong turn, not to mention an excuse to delay doing something really substantial about your relationship.

The more you talk about it, the more time you have to not do anything real about your situation. So here the two of you are, doing step one over and over again when you could be in step two by now.or maybe even step 3 or 4 with somebody else. 

I guess what I’m trying to say to both of you is, “sh*t or get off the pot.”  All this time you have held back – as has he – from taking any responsibility for your relationship. The stuff you have done so far have been things you can always pass off as caring, but caring the way anyone would a stray dog run over by a car. 

Yes, you watched over him not only when he was in hospital, but even after, to the point of helping him bathe, change clothes etc. But that does not necessarily mean anything because you can easily explain away your behavior as something anyone would do if someone called and asked to be brought to the hospital.

Or if not a dog run over by a car, then a lark, as in looking up an ex-high school friend through FB. “Katuwaan lang ( just for fun, nothing really serious). 

Of course, M is playing the same game, telling you he misses you, but like you, that is not really saying much. It is easy to tell friends you miss them. Or even love them. It would be a weird friend indeed who did not feel validated being told that, especially if the only response expected/hoped for is “Awwww, I miss you too!!” 

Of course, we could say M then ups the ante by saying he has more to tell you about his feelings…but not just yet.  When kaya? I have a feeling it will be when he gets a signal from you, a signal which clearly states that it is okay to feel more for you than he would a friend.

But that will never come at the present rate, because you too are waiting for the same signal from him.

It’s as if you are both waiting for the other to make the first move so that you are saved from being rejected.

But it doesn’t always work that way in real life, Confused, especially for those of us who have loved and lost—not necessarily via rejection but, say, through death – in the past. 

It makes sense that we are more careful because of the pain we’ve been through.  But if life is to continue being worth living, we cannot stay on the sidelines, hinting that we wouldn’t mind a real relationship, and yet not willing to take the risk it entails.

Pat Benatar has a song, “Hit me With Your Best Shot.” Its lines include:

“Knock me down / It’s all in vain / I get right back on my feet again”

It’s something we all have to do, Confused. We have to keep on slugging it out with our fear of rejection, cowardice, preferring to curse the darkness rather than lighting that itty bitty candle. If not, the best we can win is second prize, which goes to the ones with the talent, yes, but not with the courage to give it their best shot.

In a way, your lives before the stroke were in another country in another year, where you flitted in and out, playing your games; fun games they were, but games nonetheless. But that was sometime back, and life has taken on a new sense of urgency since then.  

As T.S. Eliot says in his Four Quartets:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language / And next year’s words await another voice.” 

Why not let M hear yours? And should he not respond to your new voice with the joy, pleasure and respect it deserves, well, best you know now than later, yes? And in the same way Maria Callas’s voice does not wither in the absence of a grateful listener, neither will yours.

All the best,

Margie

– Rappler.com

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