More importantly, I tend to assume that mutual love will blossom.
I certainly know from experience by now that this is not always the case. . .but the fact is that, more than once, I have gotten very close to someone before realizing that, as much as I might care for them as a friend, as much as they might turn me on or vice versa, as much as I matter to them. . .I don't love them and probably won't.
The first relationship that I was ever in was like that. Kim was--and presumably still is--an attractive, intelligent, musically inclined, funny person. We were together for ten months, and for the first several of that, despite the serious mood swings that she had, I was truly attached to her.
If I could figure out what it is about me, and about other people, that causes me to fall in or out of love with them, I'd be a lot happier, and would have left far less pain behind me. When I realized that I'd fallen out of love with her, I did not have the courage to tell her so right away. (Granted, there were extenuating circumstances, in that she had just been released from a mental institution.) As a result, I made one of the most colossal mistakes I've ever made, and was only saved from becoming a father at seventeen by blind luck. (Do not have sex with someone, if you're not trying to impregnate them, without using a prophylactic device. If you must do this, don't do it when she's ovulating. If the previous two conditions are met, don't do it when you're trying to figure out when the best time to break up with an acutely depressed person is.)
It's a horrifying feeling, realizing that you no longer want to be with someone that you have devoted a major amount of your recent life to, and who had seemed necessary just a short time ago. I recognize that change is part of life, and I would not want to be in a relationship that was completely static. But to go from a presence of feeling to an absence makes me appreciate just how little I understand myself in some crucial respects.
21 April 1996