I am willing to admit that I have (obviously) not done a good enough job to convince this unrequited love of mine to give me what I want. That’s what I’m most upset about: Not that she is making a poor decision — which she is, because only I know what’s in my head and in my heart — but rather that somewhere, at some time, I was fully capable at configuring together the perfect combination of words, or having a moment, even if for only an instant, to let her know that I was the fucking guy. It was there. It could have been. And it got away from me.
Now, for whatever it’s worth, it is imperative for me to hit the ground running when I do inevitably receive from her the bad news. I’m not pretending like it’ll be easy for me — for these matters of the heart have never been so casual or ordinary that I am allowed to have amnesia for all the strong feelings I’ve been carrying — but at the same time this is not my first rodeo, as they say. I can count on but a few fingers the women I have felt so strongly about and gone so far emotionally for, and each time the pain lessens. The pain lessens and the lifespan of the pain shortens. So I’ve got that going for me.
Contrary to my hardwired nature as logical and/or analytical, as a person who believes in the scientific method, and who rejects all manner of superstition, there does seem to be something behind the idea that the gut normally knows before the brain. I don’t know if that’s science or pseudoscience; I don’t know if it means I’m actually more pessimistic than I generally lead on and am simply orchestrating a self-fulfilling prophecy; I just know when the alarm bells start ringing they are neither heard nor seen but rather felt. In my stomach.
And so it is that this last year of mine, which was stacked sloppily atop the year prior like a goddam Egg McMuffin, has been a difficult sort of experience. I mean, the band Brand New once opined on an unreleased track titled ‘Flying at Tree Level’ that: We were doomed from the start, as starters are, and me and my unrequited love were no exception. How does one such as I navigate through Niña’s death (2024) while simultaneously exploring a budding type of love? How does one such as I recover from lying point-blank (2025) when asked by my unrequited love if the rumor going around was true that I had slept with another woman?
I do long for the days of teenage love when bridges got burned and only fireworks ensued whenever the journey inevitably went kaput. There was a certain finality to it. The young and the dumb, which I was (and some would argue still am), can wrap their brains around that. No extra thought was required. No extra action, or effort, was necessary. Something was, and then something was not.
These ends just feel differently with age, because it’s not anymore as if I am wishing ill-will, or as if I have some chip on my shoulder which says I’m Going To Show You. If truth be told I want only happiness for this unrequited love. I played my cards, in a manner of speaking, and I left it all out on the field, in another manner of speaking, and the outcome isn’t what I desired. It is more like I met my match instead of feeling scorned or betrayed. And I can live with that.
I can live with knowing that everything was always directly in front of me, and I failed. Pride and ego and arrogance are each and all responsible at every turn for my undoing, and I will continue to be exceptionally hard on myself. But also there is some strange comfort I hold onto, quite warmly in fact, that with this one it wasn’t a matter of sitting on the sidelines and never getting in the game but rather having taken every shot I could have and simply missing when it mattered most.
The entire ordeal was just so far outside of my normal means of operation, so beyond my behavioral tendencies. I indeed lied (as noted above), but then the following day I told the truth. When circumstances continued drifting further and further from my favor, or control, I didn’t give up. In spite of the uncomfortable truth my stomach so regularly pushed me towards, I hoped and I dreamed and I kept the faith.
And every day for the overwhelming majority of the last twelve months I let it out. I let the truth — the one that my gut knew about before my brain did — come out. Little-by-little I felt the pain releasing itself from my body. Rather than blowing it up and burning down the fucking bridge all by myself, or finding in the proverbial garage some old box filled with illegal fireworks to shoot off, I endured the pain a man feels when the woman he loves does not love him back, or at least not in the same way, or at least not in the way that he needs.
I was talking recently to one of my close friends about the lessons one learns as a byproduct of such strong feelings. How as a 19 year-old my breakup taught me self-awareness, and a better way of treating people. How as a 30-something year-old I found out what it meant to feel desperate, like truly desperate, for the affection of another human being. And how these self-corrections oftentimes become overcorrections, and end up working out ironically to one’s detriment.
These scars of mine obviously run quite deep, to the point where it is almost as if I am sometimes too self-aware, and too standoffish, because the alternative seems to me so much worse. What am I supposed to portray myself as? Insecure? Vulnerable? Texting too much? Caring too much? It is an awful sort of mixture no matter which way it comes out.
The way it goes, as a consequence of everything I have ever been, everything I have ever learned, every correction, every overcorrection, and every correction to my overcorrections, is that women are generally drawn to me in some innate way due directly to my so-called toxic masculinity. That it is only when I turn against myself, and my toxicity, that they turn me away as well. It’s like they happen to love the worser, more aloof version of me, and they are repulsed when I actually give a shit in their direction — because at that point there is nothing left to differentiate me from any other random guy who happens to like them.
I am willing to argue that it has been a very intentional choice of mine that I am 36 and childless and that I have never been married. That is not a mistake, in other words. But there have been moments in my life when I didn’t have a choice. When I was feeling deeply the capital-L variant of Love. When it meant nothing to sacrifice any amount of my time or money; when if the other party needed me right now I would have already been there; when I would have put myself through any amount of pain, physical or emotional, for even the slightest chance of potential success.
And so it is and always has been, for me, the same old song. That I really do thoroughly and like wholeheartedly enjoy my solitude. That there are so many fewer problems to deal with and/or obligations in need of completion when I have to rely only on myself. That my pride and ego and overall conception of my identity is never tied, I don’t feel, to another person. That I don’t often experience any form of issues regarding self-esteem, and thus even when I do go months or even years without ‘seeing’ or ‘dating’ anyone it never makes me feel undesirable.
That women typically always give me more than I am willing to give them in return. That I pretend not to be a selfish man, but in fact the only reason I don’t feel selfish anymore is because I was once, as a youth, and as a teenager, and as a young adult, exceptionally selfish. That it takes one to know one. That going from a 10/10 selfish ass mutherfucker down to a 7/10 selfish ass mutherfucker really does feel like a giant leap. That what is giant to me is not so giant to the women who only see and only how selfish I am towards them.
That I really love women. That I love the tall ones and the short ones and the full-figured ones and the petite ones and the foreign ones and the white ones and the Americanized foreign ones and the foreign white ones and the dumb ones and the smart ones and the ones who wear crosses around their necks and the ones who don’t believe in anything and the ones who wished they believed in something but can’t, because to them it doesn’t make any goddam sense.
That one of my problems is how highly I think of my own mother. That I am closer to her than I have ever been to anyone. That I am not, in fact, a so-called momma’s boy, but that in some way — inexplicable, and natural — I compare the coolness and capability of every individual of the opposite sex to the coolest and capability of my own mother. That women generally end up with men who are like their dad. That men generally end up with women who are like their mom. That there is nothing we can do about that.
That it is OK to just sit around and, like, hurt. That nothing lasts forever. That this, too, shall pass. That pain is something we, collectively, have in many ways gotten so much better at regularly, almost routinely, eliminating, whether through the echo-chambers we surround ourselves by, or the mindlessness of video games and/or social media. That pain can be (and typically is) a healthy thing. That wounds creates callouses, and callouses create strength.
That no parent or teacher or coach can ever like truly prepare you either for love or the loss of it. That no poignant film, or true-to-life television show, or gut-wrenching compendium of sad songs, or any of the best love stories within any novel, in any age, is ever a worthy enough substitute for the real thing. That 1 is in fact the loneliest number. That, sometimes, you simply have to figure shit out all by yourself.
That it does get easier, the older you get. That time is a funny sort of abstract concept: The way it slows down, the way it speeds up, the way it just goes on relentlessly without any care about you or me or anybody else. That I take solace in the idea that time will deliver me from my pain while simultaneously understanding or at least like acknowledging that in the meantime it is my worst enemy.
That part of the reason I wanted this one so badly — this one, with my unrequited — is because I fear it was my last good shot at being a good man. That most of my adult life has been a revolving door of bad decisions and slippery slopes, but with her, or for her, or however I am supposed to describe it, I really did envision a wholesome and kind of responsible future. That I fear it requires of me a purpose, and something ambitious to shoot for, such as she was, to draw the best out of me. That in the absence of someone I feel, or felt, so highly of I am as susceptible as ever to crawl back to the low-hanging fruits and rewards that have always seemed to find me.
That I will be making a sincere attempt at mitigating this loss, or this void, by going back to school in the spring and beginning anew on the path to law school. That I don’t right now know of any other way with which to go about this. That I don’t really know where to go from here. That I don’t really know what to do, period. That I only know I must do something.
Future Bets 
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