![]() It’s all very well for Esther Perel to reassure us that “a good relationship is the ability to see its flaws and still hold it in high regard”, but could I find the wisdom at 60 to resist re-enacting my prior relationships and to simply allow the light to shine on to the folly of my neuroses? Why was this relationship working? How could it be so easy and drama-free? I mean, he’s so securely attached he gave me carte blanche to write this piece! ‘Tell them you keep on trying to dump me, but I won’t let you.’ It’s hard to accept that anyone will hang around once one’s imperfections puncture the fantasy. So unaccustomed was I to being in a relationship with someone securely attached, I kept on looking over my shoulder for red flags I’d missed or on the lookout for early signs of withdrawal or rejection. Falling in love is a necessary and divine sort of a fiction filled with denial and a fair bit of self-deception, especially at the beginning. Sometimes he’d call if there was a signal and read his letters to me over the phone. ![]() Not much else to do on your own in a van once the sun goes down and you’re living off the grid and out of range during a pandemic. A surfer – who would have thought? When the New South Wales boarder closed he got stuck and wrote me love letters. My last one, though short, had crippled me. ![]() I’d promised myself and anyone who cared that I would never ever be in another relationship. Astrology: bah humbug! He read my palm: woo-woo but weirdly sexy. We were both on the cusp of turning 60 and only nine days apart. My boyfriend and I met a few months before Victoria declared a state of emergency. Perhaps we have the chance to create ourselves anew every time we fall in love, just like every time we travel to another country? Susan Sontag said it’s “superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts … In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could to any person I create myself.” Is a love letter still a love letter if the recipient doesn’t know who it’s from? What about if the letter is never sent to its intended recipient and remains like a journal or diary entry? When they stopped, I’d felt a little sad. They were like daily clues to a cryptic crossword from someone who only ever identified as “Love from the Toucan Club”. In 1984 I received a love letter, or rather a love postcard, every day for a month. Others after I had been dumped – what lengthy impassioned arguments for the defence those were! The power relationship between dumper and dumpee always works the same way, irrespective of whatever history leads up to the final break. Some during those early days of mutual limerence. I went on to write a few more love letters in my time. I overthink what he may or may not be feeling. ![]() I respond tentatively at first and then lay my guts on the line. Thanks to Trev having been so conservative with his paper usage, today I have testament to both his and my correspondence and it effectively set the template for my future romantic life: he professes his love upfront. Please tell me why you threw this stone at me, if you tell me why I will love you again. I think I will love you again, the stone did hurt.
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