So as you know, I had the sweetest love affair.
Maybe you didn't know. OK: now you do. With a man who liked to slow-dance in the dark in my apartment. To the tune of his humming. (True story--this exists.)
I realize that I'm recently out of a marriage. Very recently. I think sometimes real relationships happen this way. I once said to my lover, I don't think you always get to decide when in life the most important people are going to come along. Sometimes they come at the worst possible times. You are meant to know them, however. They are not just passing through.
I was meant to know this man. Or somehow I already did. Somehow as soon as I met him I connected to him. Pure instinct. I know of no better way to explain.
But for reasons, so many reasons, so many biblical and ethical and primal and big, big hard reasons, it wouldn't work. We couldn't, it wouldn't, the damned thing just wouldn't work. He called it a car with no brakes. It was: It was relationship bulimia. We sucked each other in with starving abandon and spat each other out with rage and shame. Over, over and over.
Until one day, we came up with a solution.
No: I came up with a solution. I get to own this brainchild.
Because we couldn't live serenely with each other, but could not seem to consider living without each other, why not agree to an expiration date?
An expiration date is similar to another notion I've had: the 3-year contract. [It wouldn't have to be 3-year; it could be 6-month, 1-year, etc.] It's exactly as it sounds: A couple would agree to be together for a set amount of time, and would agree ahead of time when they will expire as a couple.
It seems like it would take so much pressure off, doesn't it? The big what-are-we-going-to-do-about problems go away. It's becomes about time together, you two, right now.
If either of these notions instinctively repels you, you might as well keep reading because you've come this far but the rest of this isn't going to make much sense: He agreed.
He chose September 1. I agreed. We hugged. We loved. We had us back.
And we did--I suppose I will never know what he experienced in the short time that ensued, but I felt ridiculousy alive. My joy was overwhelming. I found myself on many sunny afternoons walking along Upper Broadway thinking, this is why I got divorced. I am happy in the deepest possible place.
But it turned out not to be enough. It turned out we couldn't even make it for three more weeks.
We blew up again, unexpectedly, suddenly, on a dazed hot Sunday in May, and we couldn't reel it back. It had, I had, it had, gotten too ugly, too screwed up. Somewhere we had gotten too far gone. We were so on fire that nothing could put out the flames. I personally was an inferno. More about that another time, when I dare to look more closely.
The truth is that the expiration date was bound for failure for the most fundamental reason: It was a lie. I never meant it to work. I didn't believe he would be able to leave me on September 1. True story? I didn't believe he would leave me, ever. I thought we were like that.
So all of the good stuff, all of the living room dancing, was gone again and hard in a big dead instant: a telephone hung up, a small sob in an empty little room. A moment so loud and so silent at the same time that it will take the rest of your life to get the sound out of your ears.
Here's my bottom line: While the expiration date is probably only a great idea in very select situations, absolutely do not consider it with a man you love.
Oh, how you will ache.
