I am almost afraid to write this one. I’m afraid of overplaying my hand, of jinxing myself. Of looking stupid. I also have a strong reticence about publicly discussing something very private and even more holy to me.
I did not expect this, not at this time of life, and not! with this man (DF). My first reaction, when I realized, when the recognition burst upon me like the brilliant lights of an elaborate fireworks display — “No. Oh, no. No, no, no, NO WAY!” because he’s my friend, and that was the start and finish of it, and because he is warm and comfortable and funny and so remarkably safe, and I don’t want that disrupted.
When I became friends with DF, it was with absolutely zero interest in love. This was important because, I now realize, I had been too quick, following my divorce from TFP (The Fairie Prince) to imagine virtue and character in a man before it was really demonstrated. I’d also been slow to admit grave defects of character of a couple of the men I’d dated.
I’d come into the acquaintance with DF with a whole stack of chips on my shoulder, because of those other relationships, and because he is better educated than I, and because I was defensive about that, and about being (seen as) a subordinate, defiant against a presumed dependency . . . yes, an entire stack of chips! and those gradually, with his good humor and patience, gingerly laid down . . . It was years in coming; I didn’t want any of it upset. And it all seemed so impossible —
The experiences of an abusive marriage (and marriage to a gay man is abusive) make it difficult to trust. It’s not just that it’s hard to trust someone not to be playing me false, pretending to be someone they’re not. A man will pretend to love us in order to use us for easy sex, for instance. That one is pretty easy to suss, actually. Or maybe he’s a Peter Pan looking for a surrogate mother to take care of him while he’s an overgrown child — a bit harder to recognize when boyishness is so endearing and normal (to a point) at any age.
It’s hard to trust someone to be authentic with me. To be honest and consistent about who he is and what he’s willing to bring to a relationship. To be able and willing to stand toe to toe with me, as an equal. I’m an “alpha female;” few men can stand with me as my equal, much less my “lord and master.”
Nor am I willing to be treated as a remodeling project — for the life of our marriage, more than a decade, TFP persisted in telling me I’d be great if only I’d alter this or that (usually my domestic failings), which was never enough — Or found fault with and punished for trivial disputes or failings. It takes a lot of proving to reach a trust that someone will be loyal and won’t abandon me, not even when I am not all sweetness and light. When self-doubt blankets me. When I’m not good enough. Even when one knows the criticisms and punishments are a deflection from the real issue, and the abandonment was the other’s great flaw, there’s the nagging worry: what if he (TFP) was right? and there is all this stuff wrong with me? There is no peace in trying to contort oneself into being “good enough” to “earn” someone’s love. But one tries, none the less.
So this friend, dear DF, has patiently earned my trust, and, what’s more, my respect and esteem . . . this man whom I admire so greatly, is far dearer to me than I ever expected him to be.
By not looking for, in fact by immediately and very decidedly ruling out, all the “interesting” stuff, I actually served myself well by allowing the friendship with DF — with the trust, respect, and esteem that give foundation to that friendship — to find its own level. To grow into its own time and sphere, without being forced or manufactured, or manipulated by wishful thinking. And I think that is important: we have to learn the patience and we have to find the peace with ourselves to allow every relationship to find its proper level in our lives.
There is no compensating for the losses of our youth, or the wounds that come from our failed marriages. Yet we are so often driven to try, come hell or high water. DF is not a replacement for TFP; he is his own man, with his own integrity; at the same time, because we do not exist in stasis, I am not the same woman I was in the early years of my friendship with DF, much less the early period after the divorce from TFP. Consequently, my esteem for DF and the friendship we share have an integrity and a dynamic – almost a life – of their own.
Again and again, I am left in awe after a conversation in which DF has made it very clear that he has no agenda to remodel me, that what he wants for me is that I be faithful to myself, that I live with integrity and strive to be my best in all that I do, in every sphere of my life. He makes me want to stand a bit taller, be stronger and better . . . but he leaves it to me to determine just what that means.
This is unexpected freedom.
Surviving The Rainbow 