Leftovers

The friend zone has a bad rap. Are our lives diminished by high quality friendships? Fuck no. Studies by Harvard, UCLA, and many other universities tie close relationships to an increased quality of life. So why is it that being in the friend zone fucking sucks? I’m especially hypocritical in this moment because I’m kind of offended by seeing the friend zone as a negative thing. Oh, a person only has value to you if you can give them a wienering?? Come on. Do better. Be better. 

But in the moment, I’m a little… mopey. Maybe more than a little mopey. I sent a tearful Marco Polo video to a friend last night bemoaning how unlovable I feel. And that’s not exactly fair. I’m going through a divorce. My ex is still in my home and still wants to save this marriage. How can I sit here and complain that no one wants me when literally someone wants me??? But that relationship is damaged beyond repair. I’ve written about it ad nauseam in Prosebox and private journals. I’ll probably write about it further here as I continue processing my thoughts. But for right now, I’m eliminating that as a possibility for the purpose of this entry. 

Which leads me back to my current sense of hopelessness. I feel ugly, inside and out. I feel unwanted and unlovable. And I’m saying it here because none of y’all really know me. If I said this to any of my friends, they’d leap to my rescue with assurances and a list of my good qualities. And I know they would mean it. And I know their intentions would be good. But it doesn’t combat how I feel in this moment. 

When I decided to leave my husband, I had resigned myself to retiring hopes of romance. I embraced my family and friends and decided this was how I’d find fulfillment moving forward. And I’d find peace in solitude, filling my time with things I enjoy doing. It was a noble plan! But then I met someone. And he woke something in me. 

Now, I have to put an asterisk to all of this because the story is only half told without it. I wrote (and swiftly made private) a series of entries about a man I met here many years ago. Back then I called him Nameless so let’s run with that again. Nameless came back into my life last year while I was deeply unhappy in my marriage and wanting an escape. I’ve held space for Nameless in my heart for more than 15 years. For most of that time I thought of him as The One That Got Away. So even though I’d resigned myself from pursuing a relationship with anyone, he felt different. He didn’t give me hope that I would find love with someone, he gave me hope that I would rekindle love with him. When that failed to happen, I was still completely uninterested in meeting anyone new. The very idea of it felt almost like a betrayal to Nameless. I elected to wrap myself in the grief that grows in love’s place and abandoned hope of future romance.

Then I met the Musician. I know now that I need to steer clear of men roughly my age who can both articulate their sadness and banter with me. It’s a dizzying combination for my fucked up soul. He did exactly that and he was handsome to boot. He asked me one day what I looked like so I sent him a private note with a link to a selfie in which I felt unattractive. I knew I had a crush on him and if he was going to drop me then I wanted him to do it with the quickness. So I didn’t pose or fix the lighting or try to be attractive at all. Sending it made me cringe and I figured that meant it was exactly the right way to scare him off. But it didn’t work. He complimented my curls and we continued to engage.

We moved to talking off the site and connected day and night, texting and videos and phone calls. I realized I was starting to grow feelings, but I’m also a delightful combination of dense and delusional so maybe the feelings were entirely one-sided. I straight up asked him if we were flirting and he said yes. This made me nervous because I don’t have a lot I can offer. Not only was my ex still living in my home, but I hadn’t yet filed divorce papers. Which meant I was still very, very much married. I sent him a video explaining this because I didn’t want to lie to him (though I gave no such disclosure to my ex about the Musician so don’t give me too much credit). He said he understood based on my PB entries that I was still married and that everything was fine. We carried on flirting and getting to know each other. As my feelings deepened, I panicked again. Maybe he thought my ex and I were living separate lives and the divorce was just a paperwork issue?? So I clarified again the state of my marriage (living together, same bed, all that jazz). He thanked me for the disclosure and reassured me that all was well. We continued to talk and there were occasional spicy calls, but mostly what we did was bond emotionally. 

There were several points at which I felt confident he was not offering me the same level of disclosure I’d offered him. I was disappointed, but I couldn’t prove my suspicions so I didn’t press him on it. We continued talking, but I also resumed talking to Nameless. That burned itself out rather quickly, but what’s important is that Nameless was a man from my past for whom I still carry a lot of love. The Musician knew about him and Nameless knew about the Musician. However, the Musician didn’t know I was speaking to Nameless again whereas Nameless knew I was speaking to (and growing feelings for) the Musician. But my feelings for Nameless are not entirely platonic so hiding that connection didn’t feel good.

Then a bomb was dropped and I learned that the Musician was engaging other women in the same way he was engaging me. For reasons I have no desire to get into right now, it was uniquely painful. I took some time to process it, but eventually realized that he and I weren’t really that different. Neither of us were fully honest about our interactions, but we’d only been really talking for a matter of weeks when all the drama happened. I didn’t feel like he owed me some great debt. I was interested in maintaining communications and seeing where it led, so that’s what we’ve been doing.

The hard part is that he’s pretty insistent he can’t be in a relationship. He insists it’s not a “me” issue and that he can’t be in a relationship with anyone right now, maybe ever. That was a big pivot to my way of thinking. We weren’t in a relationship yet, but that’s what I felt like we were growing toward. In the time we were talking, I filed for divorce. We made plans to meet in person. He had become my go-to person for all things social. When I was excited or sad or restless, he had become the person I reached for. We talked about things we wanted in a relationship. I wasn’t ready to say we were a good match, but I hoped we might be. 

I’ve been doing a decent job of extinguishing those hopes for a future with him. I enjoy our friendship and cherish our connection. I don’t like the idea of talking to him with the hopes that he’ll one day want to be with me. Not only does that sound sad and lonely, it sounds predatory. I’m not interested in that at all. So it’s been a little weird untangling my feelings for him so I can figure out how to hang those up and connect as a true friend. 

But the consequence of meeting him, the consequence of him being so wonderful, is it taught me that I really do want to be in a relationship. And frankly, that hurts. I don’t WANT to want that. I want to be okay being alone. I don’t feel worthy of attraction. I don’t feel worthy of desire. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be with me. I even asked him early on what value he sees in me. Like, literally! I straight up asked him. He didn’t understand the question and the conversation took a turn, but it was a bid to understand what he saw in me as a romantic partner because I see absolutely nothing. And if I have nothing to give or nothing that would attract a man, then I want to stuff these feelings back down. I don’t want to want romance. 

But for right now, I do want it. And he’s taught me how much I want it. He’s helped me see how much I want to belong to someone and how much I want them to belong to me. He’s helped me understand things that I want in a relationship and the importance of trusting my instincts when they warn me to back away. He’s helped me see that my needs aren’t necessarily wrong, they were just misaligned with the men of my recent past. He makes me feel valid. But at the same time, he doesn’t want me. And I don’t have any real hope that anyone else will. 

So I’m wrestling with what to do with these leftover feelings. They’re not his responsibility to manage, but the hope was sealed off before he came and fiddled with all my locks. I don’t resent him for opening up these parts of me, but I’m sad that there’s nothing to do about it but put it away again.

I’m tired. I don’t want to go through the process of hoping I’ll find someone new. I want to stop wanting. I want to stop hoping. I want to be satisfied with friendship.