“Why? What did I do?” he asked her glumly. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so miserable. Yet just a few months earlier he was on top of the world, feeling as if life couldn’t get any better.
It had been such an amazing start to the relationship. The first time he met her he was literally gob-smacked. She was everything he dreamed of in a woman – beautiful, funny, smart, capable, affectionate and so much more. After that first meeting he found himself sitting in a chair at his home just staring into space for hours contemplating what had happened to him. He didn’t want to think about anything else but her. He was in love pure and simple.
The two months courtship was equally amazing. She didn’t make it easy for him but that made her all the more alluring as far as he was concerned. With each meeting she revealed just a little more of herself until the night they finally consummated their romance. That night was exactly as he imagined it would be and more. Never had anyone felt so perfect in his arms. He wanted to keep her there forever.
He knew that there had been many men before him. She warned him that the average length of her relationships was about three months. “After three months I generally find out what they’re really like,” she said. He didn’t care. He knew what true love was – or so he thought.
During the ensuing months their bond only seemed to grow stronger. They went to shows, dined at cosy out of the way restaurants, went on trips and holidays, and he lavished her with beautiful gifts. They made plans for their future life together. They would buy a house in the country, a city apartment and divide their time between the two for the remainder of their years.
They were no longer young. But when he was with her he felt young at heart again. They did things together that were usually reserved for younger people –snow boarding, zip lining, scuba diving, swimming with sharks, hand feeding Bengal tigers, rodeo bull riding, hang gliding in the Rocky Mountains, abseiling in the Andes, bungie jumping from the Kabul Gorge, motorcycle racing on The Isle of Man, mountain biking in the Himalayas, high altitude sky diving from the edge of space, and more.
She was an outdoors type, a thrill seeker who convinced him to do things he had never done before. He didn’t mind at all; cheating death each day made life all the more interesting as far as he was concerned and his admiration for her only continued to grow.
Even suffering a minor stroke and snapping his anklebone while they were ice-skating on Ojos del Salado, the highest frozen lake in the world, did not phase him. Later, when he slipped while rock climbing on the sheer face of Mount Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush ranges and was left dangling at 23,000 feet for 20 minutes until help arrived, it seemed to be just a minor speed bump in the road. Losing two fingers, a toe and his right ear lobe to frostbite, as well as 10% of his brain function due to oxygen deprivation was an acceptable price to pay in his estimation. He was deliriously happy, believing he had finally met his match.
Then it all started to go awry.
At first it was just niggly little things that happened now and then. She would express annoyance at the way he left his knife and fork at angles instead of parallel on the dinner plate after a meal. If he accidentally woke her up in the middle of the night while getting out of bed to go to the bathroom she would get angry. When it was time to go to sleep, he had to lie perfectly still or she would complain that he was keeping her awake. The little things gradually grew bigger.
One night as they were preparing to go to sleep, he found her making up bedding on the floor next to her side of the bed. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m sleeping on the floor because you keep me awake,” she replied, as she was arranging the makeshift mattress and pillows. “I think we should take turns sleeping on the floor.”
Totally flustered and not knowing what to say, he opened his mouth and closed it again like a grounded goldfish gulping for air. “B-b-but that’s totally ridiculous,” he finally managed to stammer. “We’re a couple; we should sleep together. I love you. I love sleeping with you.”
“Yes I know,” she said in a consoling voice. “But you know that if I don’t get my sleep I get grumpy.”
“OK, I’ll make an extra special effort not to move,” he said in a pleading tone.
“No, you’ll see it’ll be better for both of us,” she said soothingly. “We’ll both get a good night’s sleep.”
“I don’t want to get a good night’s sleep. I want to sleep next to you,” he said irritably. He was starting to get very annoyed. “Don’t expect me to take a turn sleeping on the floor tomorrow night. This is a perfectly good bed and I’m sleeping in it.”
She shrugged, got into her makeshift floor bed and turned out the light. “Good night,” she said. A few hours later he awoke to find her snuggled up next to him in bed. Apparently the floor was a bit too cold and hard to get a good night’s sleep.
As the days and weeks went by, he found that he was getting annoyed with her more frequently. He had a nagging sense that he was somehow being used.
She would usually organise their weekend activities, which would often involve them driving in his car all over the city to see her family and friends, as well as running shopping errands. He didn’t mind this as he enjoyed her company no matter what they were doing. She didn’t have a car and he was only too happy to play the role of transport provider. But on the rare occasions when he wanted her to accompany him on visits to his family members she would often grumble. “This trip is taking too long,” she complained on one occasion. “Next time ask them to meet us half way.”
On another occasion he was driving them to a dinner date at the house of one of her many friends in the suburbs and they were stuck in heavy city traffic. “Look, we’ll be late so why don’t I just jump out and catch the train and I’ll meet you there,” she said impatiently. He was flabbergasted at the suggestion. “No!” he said firmly. “Late or not, we’ll BOTH drive there and arrive together.” She pouted sulkily and fell silent.
Early in their relationship, he had been introduced to both of her daughters and their partners. However, she had never expressed any interest in meeting his two sons. Slightly aggrieved at this, he attempted to arrange a casual lunch during the week for the four of them at a bistro near her city apartment. However, she told him that she was too busy with work and would not be able to make the time. When he later challenged her on this she turned it back it on him saying, “It was very disrespectful of you to invite me out to lunch.”
“Disrespectful?” he asked incredulously. “I invited you to lunch! To meet my boys! How is that disrespectful?”
“You knew how busy I was,” she answered. “You obviously don’t respect what I do to just invite me to lunch like that.”
“But I do respect you,” he replied taken aback. “My boys came to visit me for lunch in the city. This was a rare chance for you to meet them both. You need to meet them at some stage.”
“No, I don’t need to meet them,” she replied offhandedly.
“But you insisted that I meet your daughters!” he protested in exasperation.
“Well, of course you had to meet them really,” she said in a voice meant to convey that this should be obvious to even a simple-minded fool. He gave up. They had many such arguments and he soon learned that it was impossible to win one because she simply refused to concede.
On one occasion, they were having a heated exchange while he was driving them home late at night from dinner at a friend’s place. At the height of the argument, she casually opened her passenger side door of the fast moving car and barked, “stop the car!”
“Are you crazy!” he yelled, frantically. “We’re in traffic on a major highway. Do you want to get us killed?”
“Stop the car!” she barked again, still holding the door open. “Or I’ll jump out while it’s moving.”
“Please!” he pleaded, while trying to keep his eyes on the road. “I’m sorry. Just close the door!”
However, he realised he was talking to an empty seat. A former stunt-woman and circus acrobat, she had executed a perfect rolling exit from the moving car leaving the open passenger door swinging wildly and dangerously in the wind. He slowed and pulled over to the side of the highway and got out of the car to look for her but she had disappeared into the night. He tried ringing her mobile phone but she wouldn’t answer. He rang the dinner host, who was her friend, and told him the story. Her friend, who knew her well, simply chuckled and said: “Don’t worry I’ll find her and get her home safely.” And so he did.
That incident shook him badly. For the first time he felt that all was not right with their relationship. In fact, there was something seriously wrong. The love of his life was a loose cannon and quite possibly mentally unstable. To put it bluntly, there was a good chance that he was in love with a nut case! However, love knows no bounds. He didn’t care that she was a little crazy. He just wanted her by his side and in his bed at night.
As the days wore on, more cracks appeared in the veneer of what was becoming an increasingly fragile union. She started complaining about his weight. “You’re too fat. You need to lose 10 pounds,” she said on more than one occasion. Then one morning she announced with an air of finality: “I’m not having sex with you anymore until you lose 10 pounds.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. “Seriously?” he said incredulously. “You don’t want to sleep with me anymore?”
“Not unless you lose 10 pounds. It will give you incentive to lose the weight,” she replied.
“Well I’ll try but to lose 10 pounds properly could take a couple of months,” he said, feeling downhearted.
“Then you better get started right now because I need someone whose bones I can feel and I’m too young to give up sex,” she said with a self-satisfied smile. The implication was clear. If he didn’t whip himself into shape quickly, she would go looking elsewhere.
He felt a deep sense of outrage at the superficiality of her demand. At the same time, however, he had the nagging feeling that on some level, at least, she was right. He did need to lose weight. It would be good for him for a number of reasons, not least for his long-term health.
However, weight was far from the only thing on his lover’s mind.
A new variable had inserted itself into the jumbled equation that represented the formula of their increasingly complicated relationship.
To be exact the variable was a “he” rather than an “it”.
Among other things, his lover considered herself to be somewhat of a philanthropist. She cultivated friendships with needy people from all over the planet and made it her mission to help them achieve their aims in life.
These people were not necessarily financially destitute. In fact, most of them were quite the opposite. However, they all needed something that his lover felt she could provide – a referral, mediation, an introduction to a key contact or something of the sort. It was the type of philanthropy exemplified in a famous film of years gone by: “I’ll gladly do this for you but one day – a day which may never come – I might ask a favour of you.”
And so it came to pass that a well to do oriental gentleman, whom his lover had known for many years, came to town seeking her help to resettle his family in the new land. In his home country, he was from a very rich and well-connected family. What he needed were connections to the best schools, business interests and other important local services that would assist him in his mission to transfer his wealth and family to his chosen new homeland. And while all this was happening he needed a place to stay.
The oriental gentleman moved into his lover’s apartment and in the ensuing weeks proceeded to monopolise most of her time, including weekends. As a consequence, he was not able to spend alone time with the woman he loved except on the odd occasion when he could convince her to join him for coffee. They used to stay over at each other’s apartments but now when he invited her to stay for the weekend, she declined saying that it wouldn’t be fair to leave her house guest alone.
“But he’s a grown man!” he said exasperated. “He can look after himself. Anyway, he’s obviously very wealthy so why can’t he stay in a hotel or a serviced apartment?”
“Oh where he comes from, that’s not the done thing,” she said with a patronising smile. “They need a support structure – they need to feel that they’re part of a family.”
“So I don’t get to spend time with you anymore,” he said morosely. “I haven’t been with you for weeks.”
“It will only be a few more weeks,” she said with a half smile that was beginning to irritate him.
“How many more weeks?” he asked crossly.
She simply shrugged indicating that she could not provide a definitive answer.
“So it could even be months?” he ventured.
She shrugged again.
“And what exactly are you getting out of this deal? Why is this man so important that you no longer have time to be with me?” he demanded, realising as soon as he asked that he almost certainly would not like the answer.
“He has been very generous,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“Generous? In what way?”
“Well, for instance, just yesterday he bought me a toaster for the apartment,” she said.
“A toaster!” he was flabbergasted. “I bought you a gold and opal pendant, French perfume, high fashion clothes, boxes of chocolates, took you on expensive holidays - a toaster!”
“Well we have also talked about investing in property together and he said he can help my daughter with some introductions to set up a business in the orient. His family is rich and he has connections over there,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk.
And so finally the awful truth was unfurled like the foresail of a yacht and laid bare for all to see.
Money! This was about money.
“We were discussing marriage, setting up a business, working together,” he said quietly.
“That would never work,” she said without a trace of emotion. “The idea was that you would look after me financially now and I would look after you in your old age.”
He hadn’t known that was the “idea” and there was no sense telling her now that he had planned to eventually bring her into his business as a partner.
“So you’re dumping me? Why? What did I do?” he asked, feeling devastated.
“Your weight was the deal breaker. I told you that if you didn’t lose 10 pounds I would leave you,” she said in the sort of admonishing tone meant to convey that he had only himself to blame.
“Being slightly overweight is not a reason to leave someone,” he said despondently.
“It is as far as I’m concerned,” she said firmly and unsympathetically.
His demeanour hardened slightly and he looked across the café table for two where they were seated into her steely blue eyes.
She stared back at him vacantly. It seemed that for the first time he noticed there wasn’t much depth behind those eyes. His intense stare must have unnerved her a little because she shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
“You told me you loved me,” he said softly.
“I DID love you,” she said with an insincere grin of the sort that people display when they’re telling a lie.
“You told me you loved me when I was this weight,” he said staring into her eyes.
She blushed slightly and shifted in her seat again. “I DID love you,” she repeated, still wearing her stupid insincere grin. “But you said you would lose weight. Instead you may have even put on a couple of pounds. I told you what would happen if you didn’t lose weight.”
He shifted his gaze from her soulless blue eyes down to his coffee cup.
“This isn’t about my weight. It’s about money,” he muttered without looking at her.
“Perhaps you should have bought us that house in the country that we talked about and things might have been different,” she said, inadvertently acknowledging his contention.
He looked up at her again. “I would say that it’s a bloody good thing that I didn’t,” he said looking at her with growing disgust.
“I told you that my relationships only last about three months,” she said. “You did well lasting eight months before I found out what you’re really like.”
He might have been amused if he wasn’t so outraged at her mental gymnastics.
“I would say that you have that one the wrong way round,” he said in a choked and quivering voice. “You have hurt me like no-one else has ever done.”
She shrugged. “Too bad, so sad,” she said in a tone that conveyed her complete indifference to his feelings. The conversation was over.
Crestfallen, he got up from his chair and put some money on the table. “That should cover the coffee,” he said without looking at her.
He turned to leave without saying anything further and heard her say, “goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” he muttered under his breath as he walked away without looking back.
And so what he thought was destined to be an enduring love affair was just another notch in the belt of his now former lover.
She was a sculptress with a studio of incomplete relationships and he was nothing more than her latest unfinished work. There were many unfinished sculptures before him and there would probably be many after him.
His friends and family tried to warn him about her. “She’s toxic and a complete nut case – stay away from her,” they said. Apparently they recognised things in her that he didn’t. But they didn’t know her like he did. They had never held her in their arms. They had never made love to her.
A part of him hoped against all hope for a miracle that would enable them to reconnect and reconcile but he realised that it was a forlorn hope. He knew that he would never see her again.
They say that time heals all wounds. However, almost a year had passed since their parting and he still longed for her.
But, as it always does, life moves on. And he had moved with it. He had lost 20 pounds, had bought a cruising boat and was sailing around the world. He understood that at the end of the day life was just a collection of choices. He could choose to wallow in self-pity, pining forever over his lost love, or he could move on to his next great adventure. He chose the latter. It was a good choice.
