I normally fall for women who appear to have their lives more together than I do. I fall for doctors and lawyers and executives. I’m attracted to women with my father’s traits of iron will, determination, education, success, strength, juggling many balls at once, responsibility, timeliness, dedication, drive and the like. In turn, they always develop contempt for me. They effortlessly manipulate me. I always feel one down.
A few years ago, I had a different type of relationship. I fell for a homeless girl. She used to sleep in her car or at the office where she volunteered or at her sister’s home. She’d been shackled for years by depression. She had nothing.
I picked her up, I brought her home, I put her in my bed, I kept her warm, I fed her, I took her to shul (even though she wasn’t Jewish), I had my way with her. I noticed it was nice providing for someone else. Normally my women have provided for me. “What do you get for the guy who has nothing?” asked my ex-girlfriend Holly Randall shortly before my 40th birthday.
Now I was doing the providing and my girlfriend was going along with almost all of my wishes. I had the power.
After a few months, we started having problems. I tired of her irresponsible approach to life. I told her to get her act together. She said to me, “You love me because I’m pathetic.”
I had to admit that was true at first but now I was tired of that.
One day when we argued, she started throwing things. Maybe it was books at first, but then it degenerated to gobs of peanut butter and I was gobsmacked. No girlfriend had ever thrown something so messy at me before. My partner was a child at heart and I found this frightening.
I grabbed her and hugged her and took her to bed and she stopped throwing things.
Our love life quickly died but then we took up chess and this common interest kept us going for another six months. After we broke up for a few months, we kinda got back together again for a year but it was so informal that we never had any discussions about where were we and where were we headed. We’d run our course. We simply huddled together for warmth on the occasional cold evening.
