Posted on August 23rd, 2008 by admin

Let’s say you are not with a married man, but are in love and have been wonderful, knocked yourself senseless. If you were any more adoring and divine, they’d have to cast you in bronze as a love goddess, give you a Pulitzer, write Broadway musicals about you. And what else are you? You are totally, absolutely not sure of him! Anxiety has set in. . . . It just does sometimes. Never mind whether it’s another woman—he definitely doesn’t spend enough time with you. His work (children, social life, sports, cronies—fill in your own enemy list) takes too much of his time. Forget marriage, he won’t commit, period . . . maybe won’t even say I love you. Sometimes he’s remote, unreachable, and then there was the Disappearance when he didn’t call for two and a half weeks! Merde! Oh, sometimes there isn’t any question he adores you and you’re delirious, but one measly day later the chill in your bones is so deep eight blankets and a quart of Napoleon brandy couldn’t warm you up.

Well, darling, everybody from Proust and Shakespeare to Andy Warhol have written about love’s ghoulishness—how the torture is frequently not made up for by the ecstasy. Shakespeare’s Richard the Third says, “I have snakes in my heart . . . my heart has turned to stone . . . I strike it and it hurts my hand.” Another sage: “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love . . . loving is a painful thrill.” A third: “Love is a state of mind that begins when you think life can’t be any better . . . and ends when you think life can’t be any worse.” Napoleon declared, “The only victory over love is flight,” and Los Angeles sex therapist Irene Kassorla, author of Nice Girls Do, says, “The minute he or she falls in love with a mortal, they’re in trouble.”

Part of your unease is that you don’t feel equal to him. You think you love more than he, yes, but not only that—and this, to me, is the real meaning of the “inequality” you feel—you figure he can cheat more than you if he wanted to because (a) he is not so hooked on you as you on him, and (b) he’s got more stuff with which to be unfaithful if he desires.

Aside from men always being in demand because of the disparity in numbers, you believe that gene for gene, line for line, he is a more beautiful man than you are a woman, plus he’s just got more charisma, more push and charm. Whenever he sets foot outside the door, you’re certain he’s in danger of being loved to pieces by a woman who merely sees him and keels over. And if she doesn’t go toes up immediately, all he need do is use some of that considerable charm and charisma to tip her over. . . . You feel he almost can’t help himself, he’s so sexy! And you? Well, you got him in the first place because you’re good in bed and you’re sweet, and you hang on to him by being adorable and loving and caring and grateful and flattering and thoughtful and protective and supportive and generous and cooking and presenting and succoring, but if you ever stopped any of that, he would obviously drop you like a scalding, wet bath towel. You keep him, unworthy as you are, by dint of great energy expended, great cleverness, even great chicanery, and great myopia on his part. Besides, he’s comfortable with you . . . you’re there. God knows you’re available. It’s no trouble at all for him to get a date with you Saturday night or any other night with no notice, but it’s always an anxiety-fraught game you play. . . . One could never say you’re winning, just that you’re hanging in. You decide only the merest whim of fate has kept him from having another woman already, but who is going to want you besides that strange person in the mailroom who brings you little ethnic candies, and possibly your second cousin Ralph who has had the hots for you since you were ten?

My dear, you paint a very strong canvas of his assets, your liabilities. The only thing is you are full of shit. Ah, yes, there is the utterly glamorous, famous person who picks you up for the briefest moment and drops you again—him you haven’t as much clout as—but celebrities are not what we’re talking about. As for the non-celebrity, he is not that much more attractive than you, even if he is physically more attractive. Yes, you may be unequal in some ways. He may be richer than you; you can’t compete with that. He may be further along in his career; he’s a hundred-thousand-dollara-year man, you’re at twenty or thirty thousand—for the moment. He may be socially more at ease, but on a human level, the level at which you operate with him and with all other men, you are perfectly as okay as he even if you’re feeling wildly outclassed. You did not get him by some fluke or manage to keep him by sheer energy, willpower and guile. You manage to keep him because you’re okay. Your brain is okay; your looks are okay. You have a warm and pretty body—pretty enough anyway—and if the time comes when you need to get another man, my darling, you can and will. All it takes is the need and wish, and then, finally, the act. The thing that is keeping you from doing that now is not your lack of ability or talent or beauty—it’s your lack of wish. And should you, at some time in your life, ever decide to go for numbers instead of one man at a time you can, yes, have numbers. We can’t absolutely guarantee the quality of all the men you’ll attract, but are all his admirers so chock full of quality? Supply depends on need—and energy!
So much for the pep talk; let’s discuss present realities.

Fact: After the first fine days of passion and romance, so quickly over, there probably is not equality for lovers. One of you is simply more in love than the other, or less sure of the other. One is leaning forward, one is leaning back. At the very least your timing is different; your aching desire to see him may not coincide with his to see you. Cosmo once asked Elizabeth Taylor, then married to Richard Burton, “In your marriage, Elizabeth, whom would you say has more ‘power’?” “I never heard such a dumb question in my life,” said Elizabeth. “Tell Cosmo that is sick. When two people love each other, there is no such thing as power.”

Wrong, Elizabeth. At that very moment he had the power, though at other times, when they were making Cleopatra together and she was the “new girl in town,” glamorous, bewitching, married to another man, not yet his, she had it. Ah, yes, womanizers always have the power until they lose it, but back to vulnerable, anxious you going out of your mind! Further truths:

1. As things stand at the moment, I believe women usually give 55 percent in the love relationship, men 45. What with the man shortage, women working harder than men at nearly everything we do, and possibly us being more shrewd and knowing a good thing when we have it, is that percentage so bad? I can live with it, can you?
2. Crazy ladies make love better than uncrazy ones. Your virulent anxiety about him somehow produces the purest kind of sexuality. . . . You’re on edge, hungry, a Bengal tiger (the best kind!) when you get to bed. I’m not sure you can have that kind of sexy love without a touch of (though maybe you’ve got a touch too much of) anxiety. When you’re unsure of him, the affair just gets riper, juicier, headier, more addictive. . . . You’re into pure passion. Of course mouseburgers tend to be passionate about everything, appropriate or not—it’s part of our package. And everybody seems to feel great attraction to something that is unencumbered and free . . . a child, a playful puppy. We want to scoop up a man who is ignoring us and hug him to pieces.
3. Don’t fret too much that you can’t play it cool. As we said earlier, there is something about the act of f    g that does remove a certain starchiness from the most starched of us . . . not being affected would be like spinning around three or four hundred times like a top and not getting dizzy. Even with somebody you don’t care that much about, the starchiness goes. In the act with somebody you love, even intelligent, liberated, “equal” and successful you can get into the crazies.
4.  Whatever your passion and anxiety, your work is not going to suffer . . . at least you’ll have that. Give or take a bad morning or two when you’ll want to gulp down the pink liquid soap in the ladies’ room and get your pained life over with, being an emotional extremist (Truman Capote’s phrase) does not interfere with your being good at your job. The passion you put into the affair is the kind a mouseburger also puts into her work—which makes you good at it. You don’t stop doing that.
5. Don’t place too much emphasis on one bad night. Eight rotten evenings in a row might justify cyanide but one or two duddy nights go with the territory. . . . You can make a comeback.

Incidentally, when he is “free” and you are “trapped,” does that mean you love him more? Yes, if you define love as need . . . you need him more, but if we are talking about pure love . . . affection, adoration—he possibly could love you more, might even be more sacrificing than you if one had to give up one’s life as with Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities or something like that. Do you think his love is nothing just because it isn’t anxiety-ridden? I’m just saying it’s possible he’s as hooked on you but behaves differently. Finally, if he’s given you too much trouble and you have given him too much unrequited love, you can grow to hate him (the tables turn . . . revenge!) but we are not at the table-turn,ing stage yet, we are merely suffering. What to do?

Tags: about love, in love