Grief and arrested development

Last week, I came to the sad conclusion that the man I have been pining for since the summer has absolutely no interest in me at all. He may have been willing, in passing, on the rebound, to sleep with me once, but that, however much I wish it otherwise, however much I fooled myself into thinking there was more, is/was the extent of his interest. In all honesty, I knew this some time ago, but knowing and accepting are two very different things. It is rare for me to meet a man I find appealing, and this man was more so than any other I’ve ever encountered. So much so, that I felt certain that he would play an important part in my life – perhaps the most important part of all. More fool me. No matter how many of my ideals he matched, no matter how much fun we had – the banter, the sly ‘in’-jokes, the silly dancing and the laughter – for him, I am no more than a passing acquaintance who insists on maintaining contact. I’m probably a nuisance. I hope I’m not a joke.

My reaction to the acceptance of this has not been fun. I feel like I am grieving for something that never happened, for the beautiful, joyous moments I had in my head with him, and for yet another episode of self-delusion. Grief seems like the right emotion, though somewhat overblown for a relationship that mostly existed in my head and heart. In truth, perhaps my grief is not just for this specific man, and what I hoped might be, but for a lifetime of loves that have never existed in reality. I am truly grieving the loss of all the experiences that should have been mine – the first, shy, tender explorations of adult emotion as a young girl, the angst and passionate emotion of a first serious love in later teen years, all the tumultuous, joy-filled happiness and freedom of youthful love affairs. I have missed so much, and I will not have those chances again. I cannot turn back the clock. And I am afraid – terrified of a life spent alone and longing for the reassurance, the intimacy, the sustenance of loving human contact and the comfort of being truly understood by another human being. I have lived that way for so long already, and I don’t think I can survive an entire lifetime like that. I feel cold and empty, and for all its’ promise, the future has a great void in the centre from this vantage point. I want a husband, a lover, a friend. I want a family and a home, and I cannot face the prospect of being alone like this forever.

But why have I missed out? From an external perspective, it doesn’t make any sense. But I have no concept of how to be appealing to the men I find attractive on any level other than friendship. My development, as a sexual being, seems to be arrested at an almost pre-pubertal level. I don’t know how, but almost every other girl I know seems to have acquired some knowledge of how to attract romantic male attention at some stage. Was there a class I missed? I have no problem making male friends, but absolutely zero ability to inspire a less platonic approach.

I started school early, and was moved up a year when I was thirteen – in retrospect, I suspect I missed out on the crucial early-teen experiences and experiments where my peers learned how to interact boy-girl. I ended up graduating at sixteen – academically set for life, emotionally unready for anything at all. It does not help, socially, to be two years younger than your classmates. I didn’t get invited to the parties where I might have learned these things, and I never found a close group of female friends who might have rectified the omission. I just have no concept of the way to act. Case in point: on Tuesday, I went to a dance class – something I enjoy very much, though find utterly daunting, because of the partner aspect (in fact, I nearly left earlier in the evening, because I really wasn’t in the mood for what felt like another round of social rejection. No one asks me to dance, so I find myself doing the asking, and that can get dispiriting after a while). Nonetheless, I stayed, and enjoyed the last dance with someone I danced with last time – an experienced and very good dancer, which makes the whole undertaking so much more pleasurable. Afterwards, at the pub, we got talking. It was great fun, until I realised that I was sitting with a man who had bought me a drink, and I was talking to him about our respective jobs and about biotechnology - not exactly small talk. Next to us, another pair had moved past the small-talk stage, but they were definitely not talking science or work! And I have absolutely no idea how I could have engendered their conversation, and not mine. Whether or not I would have wanted the conversation I was having to go another way is a moot point, as I rather enjoyed it as it was. The point is, I don’t know how to have any other sort of conversation. I don’t have the first clue about how to appear femininely appealing and in need of protection, which seems to be what most men respond to. I haven’t the first idea how to make small talk beyond the weather, or how to talk of inconsequential things. Basically, I don’t know how to be anything other than my public self – confident, intellectual and apparently utterly aloof and unapproachable – and in one way, I shudder at the idea of trying. It seems so dishonest.

It’s really a self-fulfilling prophecy: If I don’t ‘speak’ the right language, I can hardly blame the men for any failure to understand. When I try, it seems that I miss the reciprocal language – why I didn’t understand when Mr Summer suggested that I was going home with him, for example. He’d replied to my clumsy attempts to communicate in syntax too sophisticated for my elementary understanding, and so I failed to translate, until I was halfway home in my own, separate taxi. And I’ve been kicking myself ever since. Logically, I ‘m pretty sure I would have had my heart broken fairly irreparably, and I’m not at all sure what I would have done if I had understood. On the other hand, I might have been brave, and I might have been introduced to physical intimacy by someone I genuinely liked, and who I suspect would have been a very, very good instructor.

It also doesn’t help that most of the time, and particularly if there’s an interesting conversation in the offing, I am inclined to forget that men can be seen in any way other than potential friends and sparring partners. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly notice attractive men – far more than I should. It’s just that, in social situations, I almost always forget the attractiveness quotient, or that I should be behaving in a prescribed fashion if I want romantic/sexual attention, and just get on with the conversation. Actually, I’m not one hundred percent sure whether I genuinely forget, or subconsciously repress it – that injunction that “boys are friends” certainly stuck with me.

My mother said to me the other day that I needed to “be myself”. The truly scary thing is that I’ve been putting on a show for so long, in so many different ways for so many people, that I don’t even know who “myself” is without one or other of the personas I’ve created to fit the situations and vastly differing worlds I find myself in. Whoever ‘me’ is, in none of my characters do I know how to be approachable, and as for flirtation, for gentle encouragement, for open-ness, I may as well still be ten years old. And for that, for all the lost loves and lost chances, I grieve.