An Open Love Letter to My Ex Lover
Dear Ex,
I’m not sure if you intended to sweep me off my feet. You are a cautious, logical person, every word and phrase carefully thought through. I could see that from the start. I thought I saw everything about you very quickly. Your background, your profession, your marriage. All very cookie cutter and conservative. Unlike mine.
We had enough in common that we could talk shorthand to each other. We were the same age, grew up in similar environments. But you married your childhood sweetheart, whereas I entertained a conga line of sexual partners, traveled the world, and settled down with a woman.
Did I secretly want what you had? To turn from my unorthodox ways? Did you want what I had? Life on the fringes, free of societal expectations?
When you confessed you’d slept with only a few women I was dumbfounded. I wanted to take you out there and then to the nearest sex club. I couldn’t believe someone so old had so little experience.
And why now? I asked. Why cheat now?
I’m getting older and closer to retirement, was your reply. I want to take a few risks.
Retirement? We’re only 52, I thought.
Retirement was not on my radar.
Were you old before your time? Too conservative and stuck in your large suburban home? Were you someone I could even contemplate taking as a lover?
Yes, my heart whispered. Because you were kind and creative and sensual and gentle and very easy on the eye. Yes because you seemed to know what I wanted before I did. You recorded audio files for me when you went walking — they described countless amorous scenarios of us in graphic detail, each one reminiscent of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Possession. Each one flawless. We took turns recording for each other. I had never done this before, but I performed for you with gusto, because I loved the thought of you watching me. And I loved watching you so much.
You messaged me every morning without fail, and several times a day. Your dedication was laudable. Ours was a tender and intimate connection. Even though only digital I felt I knew you and you me. I knew exactly how and where you wanted to be touched, how your face would look, what you’d be thinking. It was a relationship of gorgeous anticipation.
I wasn’t to know then that the anticipation was to be the best of it, the whole relationship. I met you twice. I expected these moments to be electric, harbingers of the exquisite affair to follow. But that wasn’t to be. You couldn’t go through with it and we both sat on that bed, dejected, perplexed at the end of something that should have been beginning.
I know you consider this your doing, your fault. And this letter is to tell you that it wasn’t. That I was equally responsible. Sure, your overwhelming feelings of guilt were as much a surprise to me as to you.
But I played just as large a role in the downfall of our affair before it started. Because I couldn't feel anything. I tried to convince myself there was the chemistry I had experienced online. But it wasn’t there. When I kissed you I could feel your lips, your skin, your stubble. But I felt nothing in my body that connected me to the ‘you’ that I knew. I was kissing a stranger.
You may never read this, and it has taken me a long time to understand and to accept that sometimes there is magic between two people that doesn’t always last or translate into reality. But that doesn’t diminish how breathtaking those moments were between us at the time. We both wanted it to work so much beyond those months. We could see it ahead of us. But there were no real feelings, nothing to propel us into that future. And that sometimes happens. And that’s okay.
Yours with love, but without feeling,
Miss A
