Grief Monster

A few years after I got divorced, my father died. His health declined over about a three-year period and we all knew what was coming. I knew that, when the time came, I would want to be held. To have a man to put his arms around me. But I was single.

I went out. I had profiles on various online platforms. I dated. I’d have a bad date, and then go on another one. I’d have a good date and get excited about someone, and then never see him again. I began to wonder why.

After one particularly bad experience, I had an epiphany. I was seeking comfort from complete strangers. I wasn’t consciously setting out to find it, but it was what I wanted. I was already experiencing the grief of loss, and the clock was ticking down to the time when I would need comfort most.

Without me realizing it, I was showing up as needy on dates. Never doubt that men can read how you show up. They didn’t know that I was seeking to have the comfort I would want when my father died. I wasn’t about to say anything like that on a first date, even if I had realized it beforehand. And, truly, it wasn’t a reasonable thing to expect from someone I just met.

However, even without knowing that, my dates could tell something was off. They could read my overwhelm, but I never gave them the clarity of the reason for it. For that lack of information, they assumed that I was emotionally unhealthy. Men who thrive on co-dependence and a push-pull dynamic were drawn to me. They sought to exploit my neediness. Men who were confident, kind, and healthy – the ones that I liked – chose not to pursue me.

It was a hard-earned lesson. I quit looking and I spent the time after my father’s death in solitude.

Earlier this year I reached out to a man with whom things had not developed. We’d kept in touch, but our conversations had dwindled. I told him that I found him to be both physically and intellectually attractive, and asked whether he was interested in being lovers. I took the chance to try to bring sex into my celibate life.

Initially, there was a mismatch between what I meant, and what I think that he thought I meant. He said he thought that I was trying to trick him into a relationship and, in contradiction, seemed also to think I meant just hookups for sex. I wasn’t and I didn’t. I meant a friendship where we’d spend an evening together that included sex, as long as neither of us was dating someone else. In hindsight, I should never have even suggested this because I genuinely liked him overall.

It never happened. What did, was a series of attempted plans that kept falling through.

About a week after I asked him, my mother died. She had medical issues, and while I knew her death was a looming possibility, the timing was unexpected. I wanted comfort. I wanted to be held. I wanted this man to put his arms around me.

However, I was afraid to ask him. Why? Because the night before she died, he and I had plans that fell through.  We’d decided to get together for an evening in, at one of our houses. We were both getting ready and I got put off about some of the texts we were sharing. I froze. He got frustrated with me, and, I didn’t respond for several hours. Neither of us offered the other our address, so we didn’t meet.

After that, I assumed that if I asked him to hold me that he would say ‘no’. I honestly don’t know what he would’ve done. He reached out to me several days later. I could’ve said what happened, but I feared his rejection so I kept it to myself – played things cool.

Grief does weird things to a person. I didn’t have comfort, so I just pressed forward. I focused on to-do list tasks. I knocked them out, and all the while, kept up an on-again-off-again text communication with him.

For months, I didn’t even tell him that she died. I remained afraid to open up to him, and yet, I couldn’t understand why, with both of us single, it was so hard to get together. I invited more mismatch, and tricked myself into consciously expecting to receive something else.

He was genuinely attracted to me, and me to him, but things were sideways. They were sideways from the moment I crossed into grief, and kept it to myself. Maybe they were already partly sideways when I asked him about being lovers because I felt rejected by him not choosing to pursue me when we’d met. Maybe there’s a maybe on his side about which I know nothing because neither one of us really opened up to the other.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat – a strangely similar experience to dating before my dad died. And I didn’t even see it.

Our communications became text-only. At first, our conversations were light-hearted, playful and covered a range of topics. They made me smile hugely. As things didn’t progress, however, they devolved into purely sexual discussions that were exciting until they culminated in failed plans. I kept it superficial by refusing to be open; he insisted on strictly casual with no dates. Things crossed into a series of block-unblock on both sides.

At one point, he said goodbye to me, saying that he found me very attractive and would have to get over the physical attraction. Then in the next text bubble, he said, “Not healthy”. I felt affronted when he said that. Looking back, I wonder whether he saw the unhealthy nature of our interactions before I could.

That wasn’t the last of our texts. We continued to engage in sexual conversations. For me, it was in hopes of having part of what I wanted, and it felt fun; I can’t say why on his side.

It’s excruciating to experience the grief of losing a close relation when you’re alone. When you’re a deeply emotional being. To try to assuage it, I was willing to serve up sex on a silver platter to a guy that I’ve known for six months, but never had intimate relations with, and he lost all respect for me. While he didn’t act perfectly either, to his credit, he finally turned me down.

Why? Because, on the whole, he’s a good guy, and sex isn’t really all he wanted. In addition, he met someone else, who I presume he still respects. He chose to pursue her.

For my part, I finally remembered leaving myself as an option means getting treated like one and that chasing only brings breadcrumbs, which isn’t what I want. The embarrassing thing is that I didn’t even realize what I was doing until he told me he wasn’t going to keep communicating with me. I sat with it, spending the weekend that I’d hoped to be enjoying with him, processing grief instead. As much as it stung for him to tell me that, it was an important reminder of my previously hard-earned lesson.

If envy is the green-eyed monster, grief is the invisible one.

As hard as it is, look inward when things repeatedly don’t turn out with the kind of person you really want. There’s likely a reason that comes from you. In this scenario, it was that I needed to work on being emotionally open with less fear. Whatever it is for you, explore it, without berating yourself, and work to address it.