Dear Modern Austen: Should I have gone?
Modern Austen advises Confused In/About Love on self-respect, second chances, & Facebook messages.
Dear Modern Austen,
I’m writing to you because I need to share this with someone, and my friends who know my history with this person I’m about to tell you about wouldn’t understand. They would have advised against every decision I’ve made over the past few months, which ultimately led to my booking a flight to spend time with a man I thought I’d cut out of my life for good two years ago. When I say “cut out,” I mean that I had to go nuclear: Once I sent a carefully-composed goodbye text, I orchestrated a symphony of blocking and deleting across all communication channels before I could read any reply he might send. I knew his reply would be a trap; I could never resist his replies, no matter how hurt or angry he made me feel.
Our story began when I was in my mid-twenties, and he was in his early 30s. There’s a five-year age difference between us. When we met, he’d already been married and divorced, which put him whole milestones ahead of me at a time when I was finally starting to feel like I didn’t have to choose between buying groceries or paying rent. He hit on me in a bar. It was one of those “I-saw-you-across-the-room-and-had-to-come-over-to-talk-to-you” situations, which I don’t typically find myself in. I remember he came on strongly, even called me Cleopatra because of a chunky necklace I was wearing. He asked for my number, and I gave it to him despite feeling overwhelmed. But immediately he was too much, so I blocked him—blocked him from the very beginning.
“It was one of those, “I-saw-you-across-the-room-and-had-to-come-over-to-talk-to-you” situations, which I don’t typically find myself in. I remember he came on strongly, even called me Cleopatra because of a chunky necklace I was wearing. He asked for my number, and I gave it to him despite feeling overwhelmed.”
A few months went by, and I’d forgotten about the man from the bar, until he showed up where I worked. He was getting his onboarding tour of the office like all new employees do on their first day. I didn’t recognize him when his tour group passed my desk, but he recognized me.
“Cleopatra?” Did I not give him my name that night? No matter. It all quickly came back to me, as no one else had ever called me Cleopatra before. This was the guy whose number I’d blocked.
While we’d be working in different departments at different times of the day—he was a shift worker at the company and started in the late afternoon—he wanted to clear the air, to apologize if he offended me. He hoped I wasn’t someone who could make his life at a new job miserable. I told him I wouldn’t do that, and we properly introduced ourselves. That night I unblocked his number and sent a text. That’s really when everything began.
He never took things personally, he was always forgiving. I was the opposite, still am. Now I can see it’s these qualities in myself that made me want to end things, not anything he did or anything we couldn’t be. I blamed him for what we couldn’t be, took it personally that there were things I wanted that he couldn’t (wouldn’t) give me. I’d like to think I’m different now, and that’s why I reached out.
Always, our relationship was secret, sexual, and deeply intense. He claims he always made it clear that he never wanted to be in a committed relationship. I think this is probably true, and when we first started seeing each other I don’t think I cared. But then I fell in love with him, and the fact that he didn’t want to “commit” hurt…a lot. Like, it was debilitating at times. I both hated and loved going to work because there was the chance I would see him, though sometimes it felt like he was actively avoiding me. What I hated most was that he dictated when we saw each other. His attempt at keeping distance between us, I suppose.
“But then I fell in love with him, and the fact that he didn’t want to “commit” hurt…a lot. Like, it was debilitating at times.”
After Trump’s election, he put a whole border, a whole $800 roundtrip flight—a flight I always took—to Vancouver between us. Yes, he moved to Canada spontaneously, upset with the state of the country he became a citizen in under Obama. He knew friends from back home who had made a life in Canada, so he figured it would be easy to do the same. Oddly, we got along better than when we were in the same state. We sent each other playful text messages, and I took regular (what felt like “grown-up”) weekend or weeklong trips to Vancouver to see him. It was a secret in Canada, too. I never met his friends, and I always had to get an Airbnb since he didn’t want us to stay in his apartment (he usually had roommates).
I was never going to be his girlfriend. I knew it but didn’t, I knew it but…hoped? Was I hoping for this? Did the long-distance thing work just as well for me as it did for him? It’s pathetic, but I actually invented an elaborate story about being in a “real” long-distance relationship that I sometimes told people I didn’t know too well. I was in love, so it’s not like I was looking to date or find someone who wanted to be in a committed relationship with me. So I just pretended I was in one, that what I had with the man who moved to Vancouver to escape Trump was based on more than sex. I even told people that I was trying to find a job and move to Canada to be with him. I don’t know that I ever seriously thought about moving to Vancouver, but I said it often enough that it became a goal.
I have to say that while the “relationship” felt a lot better when we lived far apart, I was still mostly miserable. He didn’t feel committed to me, but I felt committed to him. I knew he loved me and had his reasons for not wanting to be in a relationship with anyone, but I just wanted to call him my boyfriend. More than once—at the advice of friends, at the advice of a therapist, at the mercy of my own misery—I tried to say goodbye for good, but out of love or weakness I couldn’t cut him out completely. When I last saw him, which ended up being days before the world shut down due to the pandemic, it was after I thought I’d finally ended things. I don’t know how I ended up back in Vancouver for a weekend, but I left feeling my love renewed.
I checked in with him throughout the pandemic and told him I hoped to visit once travel restrictions were lifted. That’s when he delivered the blow: A French woman had moved in to help with the rent after his last roommate left. She was only staying for a few months, but they were lovers. He wanted me to know and said it in a tone like I shouldn’t take it personally. But I took everything personally! It’s not like I hadn’t been with other people over the years, so his being with this woman didn’t bother me. What killed me was that he referred to her as his “girl-friend” (the quotation marks were his). Sure, he put girlfriend in quotation marks, but had he ever referred to me that way to anyone? This time the goodbye was for good: I sent a text, then blocked and deleted his number. I blocked him on Facebook and Instagram. It had to be this way. I wouldn’t move on, otherwise.
I’d gone almost two years without talking to him, and when I thought of him it was without emotional pangs. In the time I’ve separated myself from him, I’ve dated and had flings. Nothing has felt like a serious or true connection. But I’ve also had time to think about love and relationships and whether I ever want to close myself off with one person. The answer is maybe and I’m not sure. The answer is that it somehow doesn’t seem as important to me anymore. What is important is feeling…connected, like I did with him.
I started thinking about him a lot a couple months ago. I thought about seeing him again now that I’m in a different place mentally and emotionally. But I knew better than to reach out on impulse. I thought about why I wanted to reach back out (I needed to be with someone I had a connection with) and, more importantly, how I would handle it emotionally (I’ve processed the intense feelings I had for him). Then I reached out via Facebook message. He said he was happy to hear from me, that he was heartbroken when I cut him out but understood it was something I needed to do. He did and does love me.
An impromptu trip was planned. We met at a hotel in Vancouver (he got a discount and room upgrade by telling them we were celebrating our wedding anniversary). Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. I realized I could love him without a desire to be his “girlfriend.”
Now I’m back home, and he’s still in Vancouver. We’re texting again, and it feels nice to have this line of communication open. I don’t know if the future holds more visits to Canada for me.
I go back and forth about whether this was a chapter in my life worth revisiting. I think I’m at peace with it, and the trip remains my secret.
What’s your perspective, Modern Austen? Should I have gone?
Confused In/About Love
If there’s a personal matter you’d like Modern Austen’s advice on, you can send your letters to modernaustenblog@gmail.com. Please indicate whether you’re comfortable with your letter being published, & do use a clever pseudonym.
Dear Confused In/About Love,
I begin my reply with an admission: I cannot be sure that the answer I would give you as a friend & the answer I give you now, as an agony aunt, would be the same. This troubles me, because I do want to be a friend & confidante to everyone who writes in—I empathize with your friends who are emotionally invested in your well-being, know the history you have with this man, & hope for you to find happiness in love. I know, too, that friends don’t always see us clearly, & their “sound advice” is often given to persuade us to do what they believe is best (isn’t that right, Lady Russell?). Friends are always so fervently on our side that they miss the point of a story entirely, reducing all our exes & disappointments in love to cads. I’m telling you this so you know that I’m writing this letter from the clear-eyed perspective of Modern Austen (whoever she may be).
Complicated heroines & heroes make a story worth reading. I like the two people in this story because of their complicated history. It would be easy to read this situation as a vulnerable woman misinterpreting the depth of a man’s feelings, as a selfish man taking advantage of a woman’s love; but you’ve closely examined the behaviors of both, the events that have transpired, & the fault you both had in ending what you say was not a “real” relationship. Your letter makes plain your growth from the woman who “had to go nuclear” to the heroine who found the truth of her feelings & reconnected with a man who lovingly received her Facebook message. In short, you’ve summarized the various drafts this story has gone through. Perhaps story is a poor metaphor, though getting the story right seems to be a great concern of yours. From the beginning you blocked his phone number, you write, as though you have the power to control who enters & exits your life. He also wished to control the narrative, keeping you at a distance to either dull the intensity of your feelings or, more likely, absolve himself from any role he might have had in the formation of those feelings. His intentions may have been clear & upfront, but I can understand your confusion; he was trying to have a relationship that required no responsibility or commitment. Your two narratives were always going to be at odds with one another.
“From the beginning you blocked his phone number, you write, as though you have the power to control who enters & exits your life.”
Once you fell in love, you knew how you wanted the story to go. If you were writing it, you would have been his girlfriend, he would have been your boyfriend, & there would have been no reason to keep this relationship a secret or use quotation marks to undermine its reality when talking about it with friends. His sudden move to Vancouver was not in your version of the story, but you adjusted in reality & devised a fiction around his absence that put you in the relationship you really wanted to have with this man. I don’t think this makes you pathetic, though modern heroines shouldn’t let their imaginations run away from them. You were using this fiction to distance yourself from the reality of the relationship & imagine what it could be; but you were also imagining him to be different than he was, than he is, & he was never going to stick to your plot. He was not going to call you his girlfriend—with or without quotation marks—which you already knew but didn’t know; already knew but hoped.
It’s never wrong to hope, but it’s important to recognize when your hope is misplaced, when your hope won’t give you the ending or beginning you desire. But you already know this. While the man you find worthy of your affections isn’t blameless, you’ve acknowledged your emotional immaturity; an emotional backbone is required to peel away the fictions we tell ourselves. Beneath yours is the truth that your love for this man is stronger than a hope to one day be his girlfriend.
What you really want me to confirm is that messaging this man after two years wasn’t a moment of weakness. You wish me to confirm that you’ve found your emotional backbone. You hope, dear CIAL, that you haven’t lost your self-respect, for the modern definition of self-respect is to love oneself enough to never contact an ex (or to at least not be the first one to reach out).
Who you choose to love is certainly a reflection of having or lacking self-respect, but losing it isn’t as simple as returning to the arms of a man who cannot (will not) be your boyfriend. You don’t want to tell your friends about your trip to Vancouver because you know they’ll say you don’t know your own worth (either monetarily or morally). I think just the opposite. It takes a great deal of self-respect to forgive the man who hurt you &, instead, reflect on your own blindness. You’ve accepted responsibility for your own feelings, your own actions, your own life—that’s at the heart of self-respect; & after almost two years of reflection, you’ve found that you’re open to a new kind of love, a new draft of this same story. A second chance.
Isn’t this the journey Elizabeth Bennet must take in P&P before she can accept Mr. Darcy’s proposal? She must first reflect on her misplaced self-respect, which keeps her from seeing who Wickham & Darcy really are. All Lizzie’s morals & values are in the right place, pointed in the right direction, but her self-respect is pinned to her (mis)understanding of the world & (mis)reading of people. While she can discern the obvious—that Caroline Bingley is as snobby as Mr. Collins is silly—she fails to see what isn’t apparent on the surface. To love Mr. Darcy, Lizzie must first accept that she’s not as perceptive of people’s characters as she thought. You’ve had a similar realization, CIAL, & can now see your true hopes more clearly.
Should you have gone? Who would you be right now if you hadn’t? What would you be feeling or wondering about? (It’s also telling that you didn’t ask “should I go?” before you made your choice.) “I don’t know if the future holds more visits to Canada for me,” you write. In that sentence lies your answer: You cannot foretell what’s to come, or know anything other than what has passed. You went. Respect that choice.
Yours,
<3 Modern Austen