At the end of 2010, at the activity center where I have enjoyed working for several years, I meet Eline, a young woman 6 years older than me. We fall in love, and she gives up her relationship for it, something that later turns out to be a particularly persistent pattern of hers. I am so incredibly in love that I morally justify it, just to be with her. In the end, we are together and it makes for a very wonderful time. We send each other long mails, simply because we want to see each other as well as possible, because that’s what we lacked in our youth. Eline also has psychological problems, but of a completely different kind than I do. I had decided for myself that I wanted a woman who was a bit tougher, a bit stronger, and Eline fulfilled that perfectly. She was a very tough girl. I was addicted to being intimate with her, and loved her a lot, but she was sometimes a bit on the antisocial side. If I got irritated by that, she didn’t really respond with understanding, and wanted to shirk her responsibility. When we were a bit done sharing so much with each other, she started to focus a bit more on herself. I had a hard time dealing with that, obsessive as I was, and was regularly angry when she did or said something anti-social. I invariably got a reaction that I could not handle. But my love for her was so strong, and I liked to be with her so much, that I did not want to give her up. For months I continued to deteriorate. And each time, we made up again, but this could not go on indefinitely. Also she started to distance herself more and more, because she found me oppressive and she felt like she was in a prison.
At one point she went into a months-long therapy. She was going to live on her own, and we would go into couples therapy at that location. I remember it as a very atmospheric time. I took many long train rides to that clinic, and then listened to music by Rush, an American rock band. Seeing Eline every time was so incredibly fun. We clicked on so many levels. But what remained was that because of my anger, she kept distancing herself, and the couples therapy eventually ended in a “break in the relationship”. We got to talking about needs in that therapy, and that maybe Eline had a need to be hit on. I found this ridiculous, because I can hardly be positive towards her all the time, I think the negative should also be expressed. In the end she decided to break up with me.
In the meantime I had deteriorated so much that I started to undermine my self-confidence. I mentioned it to the relationship therapist and he wanted to see me once without Eline. Then he admitted to have made a mistake and he wouldn’t have thought the therapy would have this effect.
A few months later, however, she got in touch with me again. I went to her place and started hitting on her like crazy for a while. When it was of no effect, and she still didn’t want to be intimate with me, I set a limit and said that otherwise I would give up and no longer want contact. And that helped, because then she suddenly did want to. It’s striking how that can work. Before it was “on” again, however, she had something to confess to me, which was that she had had sex with another man. I was extremely pissed, and almost wanted to leave, but she begged me to stay. I decided to try again anyway (because the crush was still huge, so huge that I pushed my moral objections aside again). We had several more convivial weeks. Until we got into an argument over something small. I expressed that I had grave doubts about whether I should go through with this. And then she did get so angry, it only confirmed me. I had used her to restore my self-confidence somewhat, so it made sense that she was angry. But that was the end of our relationship, which had lasted a year and a half.
It was clear to me I was in great distress. Otherwise you don’t do such things, although at the time it wasn’t consciously done. And she in turn also did things she shouldn’t have done. But I was really sorry that things turned out this way, because she was a very great love for me.
Meanwhile, I had deteriorated to the point where I needed more talks. A good Belgian psychiatrist named Dimphy Peeters went to help me in the Anxiety and Mood Disorders department. She really gave me a lot of attention and apologized for not being able to see her sooner. At some point she knew enough, and saw the seriousness of the situation, so she decided to intervene. She made nasty remarks, until I got furious with her, in her face. She disapproved of my behavior, and when I then cried, she disapproved of that too. I was not used to this over the years. They had treated me very gently for years, to prevent deterioration, but once you get to the point where you start to undermine your self-confidence, which is very dangerous, then the hard approach is in order.
I walked down the street crying. I understood why she did it, but it felt like I was the culprit in the story again, and I was only getting more of the same negativity thrown at me. I didn’t think I deserved it, but again, I understood why she did it. By repeating the trauma in a moderate way, I can be forced to deal with it differently. Something they had done in the clinic, after all, because of the rock-hard confrontational attitude of my psychotherapist Anke van Brunssum at the time. But I really had the feeling that now I could never be angry again. What happened then is somewhat special: From then on, I only allowed myself to be sweet…
