Unrequited Love

I spend another day yesterday with my mum and dad. Another few hours of learning new things about them and their relationship.

We visited my dad’s elderly Aunt Ada. Whose real name, I discovered, is Sally. Aunt Ada is 85 but looks much older. Tiny, thin, frail and crooked. Sparse hair, creamy waxen skin, strangely huge feet and just getting used to using a zimmerframe. I could barely see any trace of the woman I knew as Auntie Ada, who looked after my Gran Gran, but her voice was recognisable - if a tone or two lighter. Ada, lives in a warden controlled flat and her home, although not the same one I used to visit every week as a child, the one she lived in with her mother, was almost a replica of the one I last visited some time in the 1980s. The prints on the wall of an Edwardian child playing the piano and learning ballet are the same ones that hung on her mothers wall and the dark furniture and 1950s coffee table brought back memories of another era. There wasn’t much to show for a long lived life in terms of books, photographs or mementos. A nurse calls each day to give her injections (what for wasn’t clear) and Ada had just returned home from a stay in the hospital. She had, she said ‘stupidly fallen over in the bedroom a few weeks ago and hit her head.’ When found by a neighbour hours later she was taken to hospital and kept in for a few weeks, finally being allowed home on condition she used a zimmerframe. ‘Bloody fuss…I told them, I didn’t want any fuss’ she said with spirit. She enjoys the soaps ‘Not that EastEnders though, horrible people’ and she still reads the newspaper. I was surprised to learn that she still pays full rent and council tax as well as contributing to her care, courtesy of a pension earned for spending 50 years in a clerical job. This hardly seems fair and from reading various manifestos it would seem the Green Party are the only ones to have a fair and reasonable policy for the care of the elderly. Aunt Ada never married, she was a late baby for my Great Grandmother, from a second marriage, and she was destined to be the one that stayed home and took care of her parents until they died. No husband (or lovers, as far as I can tell) no children, no passion for travel or music or books. Just work, home, work, home, for years and years and years. If there was a love affair or any adventures they are long forgotten. Now it is just home with the occasional visitor, who visits not out of love, but out of duty. A productive life? On some levels yes, she worked hard for many years and took care of a loved one, made her mother feel safe, secure and loved. A wasted life? On some levels – yes. A life spend in the same job, in the same square mile of the city. A life spent without passion, fear, excitement, pleasure or curiosity. A life spent deaf to great music, blind to great works of art (those bloody Edwardian prints! Ugh!) and great literature. An empty life, no photographs of her wedding day, no sons, daughters or grandchildren, no pictures of places visited or places dreamt about. Oh well it is not for me to judge. Ada’s a lovely old girl and maybe contentment with life is a better achievement than a passion for life.

My mum, aged 75, said as we left ‘I don’t want to get old’. And my dad (a youthful 71) said ‘yeah, but the alternatives not great either!’

Back at my place I dug out a 9x5 black and white photograph of my mum and dad at a dinner dance. My mum looks drop dead gorgeous in her LBD and pearls and my dad a handsome dude in his sharp suit. It was decided it must have been taken in about 1962/3 and it was the first time my dad had seen it in almost 50 years. It brought tears to his eyes and he said to me ‘now you know why I fell in love with your mum at first sight. See how beautiful she was’. Mum squirmed with embarrassment ‘Alright John, that’s enough. It was a long time ago’. ‘Yes I know, he said, but that love has never gone away’.

Another picture, showing their wedding, a family group that included Aunt Ada (she does have very big feet) brought back a bitter sweet memory for my dad. 'That's the night you sang the Shirley Bassey song for me. At our reception. Can't listen to Bassey now. Upsets me' 'Why?' I asked 'was mum that bad?' 'No' he said 'she just never meant a word of the bloody song! And I knew it at the time.'

The song? 'As I love you'

I will love you as I love you
All my life
Every moment spent with you
Makes me more content with you
Just as you are
You are all I could pray for
All that you are
That's what I wake
up each day for
Every single
Touch and tingle
I adore
Every kiss from you to me
Always seems so new to me
Each one warmer
Than the one before
As I love you more
and more and more
Every single
Touch and tingle
I adore
Every kiss from you to me
Always seems so new to me
Each one warmer
Than the one before
As I love you more and more
And more


They never should have married. They were so incompatible. He loved her. She loved his mum and dad. He was always going to be miserable and insecure and she was always going to be resentful and, because of that, unkind to him. The tragedy of unrequited love, particularly a first love, is that it never goes away.

In some cases the result of unrequited love is stalking. On the whole unrequited love is a pretty noble emotion that is traditionally dealt with by being accepting and brave. Maintaining a stiff upper lip, dignity and, with grace, you should just accept it as my dad did and move on with your life. Maybe when you hear a certain piece of music or pass through a certain place or see a photograph of happier days, you may experience a welcome pang of regret, welcome because there is a bitter sweet pleasure in dealing with rejection, but on the whole you get over it - even if you do forever hold a flame for the lost love. But a worrying modern twist on unrequited love is the inability of suitors to deal with their feelings not being reciprocated.

From this weeks Guardian:

From an anonymous, 23-year-old male

Dear Carole, There is a girl in my office who joined about eight months ago, we started talking to each other and used to text each other almost the whole night after work. We went out a couple of times and I gave her a gift on her birthday. Everything was going great.

Suddenly she told me one day that she was uncomfortable talking so much and going out as her family is very reserved and she is not that fast kinda girl. We stopped talking so much.

A couple of weeks ago she started talking normally again and replying to my text messages. One day I asked her out to dinner and she gave me the excuse that her team members would feel bad if she didn't go out with them. I was very disappointed and told her in anger that she doesn't care how I feel. I said I blamed her that she used to talk to me when she was newly joined and didn't have many friends in the office and now she doesn't care for me at all.

Since that day she hasn't even spoken to me. Please help me find out what's going on in her mind. We used to be so close when she used to text me every second minute, I don't understand her sudden change in behaviour. I really love her.

Carole replies:
You need to see this from the young woman's point of view. Yes, she was friendly towards you, but I would predict that she was equally friendly to everyone else in the office, and if others had texted her she would have reciprocated just as she did with you. The reason she was friendly is not because she felt attracted to you but because she was new.

(Now up to this point I was with Carole. She is trying to get this young man to feel some empathy for the 'victim' of his love)

To avoid inbreeding, young adult female apes usually leave their birth group and join a new, unrelated group.1 Lone young females newly arrived in an established group must ingratiate themselves and work their way up the patriarchal hierarchy. For a human primate, this is no easy manoeuvre. It appears that you took advantage of this woman's social vulnerability at a time when she needed friends (not sexual partners).

(Eh?)

At first she indulged your advances. You were an unknown quantity, she was not familiar with the office culture and she didn't want to cause offence. She didn't know who held influence, so she hedged her bets and played for time. Eight months down the line this woman now knows the score. She knows your opinion of her has little or no bearing on her social rank and survival chances, and thus she is no longer prepared to indulge your attention-seeking behaviour.

(Phew, back to human office workers. Was wondering where this was going)

She tried to distance herself from you but you pursued her and kept texting. She spoke to you and tried to let you down gently by making lame excuses. This was the moment when, for both your sakes, she needed you to empathise and understand. But still you didn't get the hint and back off.

You escalated things and fell into a trap from which few men in Western society can free themselves unscathed. (Strictly patriarchal Eastern and African societies tend to accept this type of male behaviour.) You succumbed to the common male ape behaviour of coercion.2 You wanted control over her, you became angry and intimidated her in an attempt to force her into guilty submission. You have made yourself objectionable and now she is entirely justified in not talking to you and she probably has the support of her colleagues in this.

(Me thinks Carole may be a feminist)

You need to improve your mating strategies. Do you really want a girlfriend who is only your girlfriend because she has been harassed by you? would a submissive, guilty girlfriend do it for you? Your lack of self-awareness is the problem here. You alone are responsible for your feelings in this scenario and you have got to try and rise above your basic urges to save your self-respect.

(Putting responsibility back where it belongs...Go Carole!)

There is a large body of primate research on the evolutionary origins of aggressive male sexual jealousy,3 covering the strategies of rape, harassment, intimidation and monopolisation of time – referred to as "mate guarding". Males usually behave in these sexually coercive ways around fertile females they want to impregnate. These strategies can be observed in all ape species, but less so among gorillas, who live in harems with a dominant silverback male. Sexually aggressive male behaviour has evolved as an adaptation to living in multi-male, multi-female societies where there is a lot of choice in mating opportunities but also a lot of sexual rivalry.4

(Cathy and Claire Carole is NOT)

These sorts of sexually aggressive male behaviours are more often exhibited by low-status males. High-status males who have repeatedly shown kindness, and are high status due to their mix of good genes for intelligence and physical stamina, are more likely to have females soliciting them for sex rather than their having to harass or rape in order to mate.

You say you love her, and a component of love is altruism, but you don't seem to be showing much altruism here. Yes, you gave her a birthday present, but with the strings of sexual coercion securely attached. It's good to give, but don't ever give to receive. Instead notice when your giving isn't reciprocated and adapt, and if necessary cut your losses.

You could apologise to her for bullying her, but that might invite accusations of sexual harassment. Instead, I suggest you keep a respectful distance from this woman. Be friendly to her but no more so than you would be towards anyone else in the office. Do not text her again.

(so an 'I'm sorry I was a twat. It won't happen again' will result in the poor girl running screaming to HR 'He said sorry, the misogynist pig. I feel violated. Compo please)

You need to reinvent yourself, and as a young male of 23 years you can do that. Improve upon your social and intellectual skills, perhaps take up night classes in varied subjects. This way you will raise your social status and make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. If you do so you will discover how much better it feels to be pursued by ardent females compared with how it feels to be a rejected pursuer.

Good luck.

I think what Carole means is 'Get a over it you saddo!'


Any earlier today:


Unrequited love led to kidnapping, police say
Yesterday, a young woman was allegedly kidnapped from her apartment in midtown Kansas City and held prisoner until she was able to call her sister at a McDonald's in Fairview Heights, Ill. According to court records, her abductor is a man from her hometown in Mexico, who planned to take her to New Jersey and marry her. She says she repeatedly spurned his advances and said she already had a boyfriend. Jackson County prosecutors have charged Raul Ortiz-Caseres of Mount Holly, N.J., with kidnapping.


Again....Mr Ortis-Caseres...get over it!

So glad my dad picked himself up, brushed himself down and just got on with his life. It would have been so embarrassing to cope with a kidnapping as well as everything else that followed their marriage break up.

I took a great photo of my mum and dad before they left. Mum no longer looking gorgeous and dad no longer looking handsome. They are now both round and white. But dad is still looking smitten and mum is still looking bemused.

I showed someone the photo I took of them today and I thought they were going to say how much I look like my mum so I braced myself for the inevitable feeling of depression that comment makes me feel but instead they said something strange about my dad. ‘Is he a writer’? they asked. ‘No. Why?’ ‘He looks bookish’. ‘Well’ I said ‘he used to own a book shop’. ‘Ah!’ they said 'That explains it’. Hmmm I wish it did!