I’ve only ever loved three women, and none of them are my wife

Life is a funny thing.  The women I have loved, truly loved, were not necessarily the ones I had the longest relationships with.  But they are the ones who I felt most incredible with. Why? Who were they? What was it about them?

One of them was deeply scarred by sexual trauma as a child, to the point of it nearly causing her to take her own life later in life.  But there was something about her that made our souls mingle.  The love letters we wrote to each other, little objects that we collected, the trifles of young love, are all in a box that I have kept for over 30 years.  I was reminded of it when she and I got back in touch recently, and she told me that she told me that she still had my letters.  I had told her that she is one of the only people who had ever made me cry.  I didn’t say it to hurt her, but rather to let her know how deeply she made me feel.

When she left me, I cried like a rainstorm for days, and lived in the near darkness of winter with open wounds.  Thankfully a friend was there to pick up the pieces.

And it was that contact with her, and that conversation, which made me realise how rare it is to find someone that we truly love.  And it is no guarantee that loving someone even means they are right for us or are lovable in a sustainable way.

The second woman I loved like that was the woman who taught me how to pleasure a woman.  She was the most sexual being I have ever encountered, the most in her own body, and the master of her own body.  And she loved to fxxk.  She is one of the few people where I was able to fxxk without ever thinking about it or minding that I had a cxxk.  Why?  Because sex with her was not about gender or anything else, it was completely wild, animal, hunger, all rational thought left outside.  Cuddling, foreplay, no, it was hair pulling and scratching and punching before lustful fxxking.

When she left, I felt as if I had been torn to shreds, and I can’t recall every crying so hard and so long about anything.  Grief that shattered me.  I remember lying on the floor of a friend’s New York loft (I was house-sitting for a wealthy NY family who had decided to move to LA), right on the medallion in the middle of a glorious oriental carpet and crying for what felt like days.  But such was our relationship that when I went over to her place to pick up my stuff a few weeks after we had broken up, we ended up going at it like banshees on her living room floor, on the kitchen counter, and finally in her bedroom.  

I only ever saw her once again, but in a group, and we never spoke again.

The last one hurt the most.  I left her.  Not by choice in relation to her, but by choice in relation to life.  Sometimes we make choices for ourselves which require a different course, and this was one of them.  She was the one.  I knew it.

She was so well-balanced, without trauma, easy to be with.  She was also the most beautiful woman I had ever been with by far.  She was also a freak in the sheets as they say, and introduced me to fisting, and she liked it back there too.  She was kinky, fun, and successful.  She was also a lingerie model.

But we were young, and I was given an opportunity that took my life in a very different direction professionally.  Our last 6 months together was bliss.  It was this long, beautiful goodbye.  Back in those days, it was possible to accompany someone all the way to the boarding gate at the airport, and she stayed with me until I had to get onto my plane to Paris.  But when it came time to go, I felt my heart being ripped from me, and I began to cry. 

She soothed me and said, “it’s always hardest for the one who leaves.”  She came to Paris to visit not long after and we spent two blissful weeks in our hotel room, punctuated by the occasional walk or meal.

I know that she doesn’t look back on our time with the same fondness.  I left.  And I was a lot of work too in those days.  She was there with me through my transition from dysfunctional, self-destructive human to someone who could get up on time and go to work.  My therapist had her office near her apartment.  And staying with her was a double reward as she often sent me to work in panties, or home this way.  And she never wanted them back.  The perks of her side hustle were enormous.

I saw a picture of her recently, and she hasn’t changed at all.  The same smile.  Still gorgeous.  I am scared of reaching out to her, and of these, it is only the first one who I have re-connected with.  And I find that I still have a deep love and affection for her.  

This last one scares me.  I can so easily imagine what might have happened had she come with me.  Had we stayed together.  She was the one “who got away”.  But I remember thinking of her and her alone, that she was ‘too good for me’.  It was a hard feeling but I was afraid of her…afraid that one day she would turn away from me, and I knew that if she did I wouldn’t make it.  I’ve never felt so scared of someone I loved before.  I have never run away or allowed life to take me away from someone because I was afraid of love.

And it was her niceness and decency and openness and warm-heartedness that scared me the most.  I also left her because of how much I loved and respected her.  I didn’t want to wish myself on her.  She felt to me a lighter and more pure being, and I had so much work to do.  I was successful and funny, but I was also on the edge, dark, emotionally volatile (not in the sense of moody or unpleasant but in the sense of being good, attentive company one minute, and then being quietly (as in I wouldn’t tell her or anyone else) suicidal and just wanting/needing to disappear into a hole.  The girlfriend I dated right before this one saw that once, came to find me in my apartment in Brooklyn, brought chicken soup that she had made, but saw the darkness and walked right after.  I couldn’t ask someone else to fix me, I needed to do it myself, and I didn’t want to ask this beautiful and pure woman.  I just couldn’t.

I am happy to say that all but one of these women has gone on to have lives that were easier and more beautiful, perhaps more boring, than I could have offered.  The first of them ended up in a toxic relationship which resulted in a child and a restraining order against her former husband.

I say all of this because of life’s beauty and mystery.  And how important it is to find within ourselves the beauty that moves us forward and makes us whole.  And to never be afraid of love, to never be afraid of being hurt.