Late in love - mistakes make you smart
I was missing 125 milliliters of milk for my mashed potatoes from the bag. I rang my neighbor Petra's door to borrow them. "Sure, come in," said Petra and beckoned me to the kitchen where her friend was sitting: Marie. She was adorable. Friendly, interested, funny. Nevertheless, I was short and stayed no longer than absolutely necessary. I found myself embarrassed. My appearance was the mirror image of my undecided inner life: somewhere between casual and dull. Unshaven, a sloppy T-shirt, baggy jogging pants, plus thick wool socks - one can not say that I showed my best side in this encounter with Marie. I was single for a long time, and I did not feel bad about it when I saw her for the first time.
Still, as I closed my door behind me with a coffee mug of milk, my heart pounded a little faster, and I wondered, confused: What was that? As it turned out, it was something I did not expect: I was in love. Later, I realized that the not very attractive first impression she got from me might not have been a nasty start for us. After all, is it not the case that at the very beginning of a relationship, we always go to great lengths to present the glossy edition of ourselves? That fell away: Marie had seen what she gets when I have a bad day. She wanted me anyway.
I'm 49 years old, gray at the temples, gray on the three-day beard, sometimes gray on the soul, separated for a good three years, father of two almost grown-up children. I carry around the commercial scars that accumulate in 35 years of relationship experience with just over a handful of women. Previously, I would have done anything to hide those scars. But when I realized after two or three meetings with Marie - she'd rung one day, just because she wanted to teach me how to make real potato romp - I knew that this great woman was going to fall in love with me, I guessed that it would be pointless to hide anything. That's what I did in my marriage, with the best of intentions, but it's not good for my wife and me.
My wife, better: Ex-wife. Judith. I was 22 when I met her. Judith always knew exactly what she wanted and needed, I admired her for that. And I was willing to give her as much as possible: I grew up in a time when women started making demands on us men. As a teenager I was interested in leafing through the "Emma" my aunt had subscribed to, I had read "The Death of the Prince Charming" and Ina Deter was right when she sang in 1982 that the country needed new men. I wanted to be one of them. I took more account of Judith's needs than of my own, which of course did not just disappear, but rumbled in me.
I did not fully show myself
You could almost say: I did not want to disturb. I withheld my opinion when she was completely different from her, went to Africa with her, even though I would rather have a surf vacation in Denmark, I went to the cinema instead of the stadium for her sake. I wanted to be loved, pretty much any price. And forgot to love myself. When we separated after 23 years, I knew what my share of failure was: I offered her too little friction. Did not give her the chance to have to deal with a "no" from me. I was often, too often like jello. Nobody should be married to jelly.
Now there was this new woman who kissed me gently one evening and said that she was attracted to me, but did not know exactly what to do with it. I knew what she meant: she also has a child, much younger than my children. She had a relationship that was probably a kind of positional warfare. She had also just set up in her single status and felt very comfortable with it. It was clear to me: this can only become something if each of us breaks through his old relationship patterns. Especially me.
My parents separated at the beginning of the 80s, in West Berlin that was almost a good thing, almost all my friends were divorce children. At that time I observed a phenomenon that kept me busy: While women often stayed alone for a long time, most men had new women within a very short time - and lived with them a continuation of the old marriage. On the other hand, among the men of my generation, only a few ever mindlessly throw themselves into the next relationship: we are afraid and respectful of what awaits us. We even talk about it - with a few, selected friends. About what went wrong the last time. About what we want to do better with the next woman. I think I have learned.For example, that I have to leave my comfort zone, which is always a comfort zone for everyone else. Because I'm really nice. I do not want to hurt anyone, I adapt like a chameleon if I'm not careful. And I often forget to take care. It has worked well in the past but not necessarily made me happy. I wanted to do a lot of things with Marie right from the beginning, even if it cost me overcoming - and maybe that meant that I would not have gotten her then. I wanted to be ruthlessly open.
I told her about my fear
So one week after our first kiss, I told her I was scared. Before her daughter has a problem with me. Before that she does not have one with me, but accepts me more readily than I do her. Before my own children could suffer from the new relationship. That I can not live up to Marie because I will not do anything I can to please her - the times are over.
I said that I would like to use my season ticket for Hertha BSC in the future, that sometimes I do not feel like brushing my teeth in the evening, that I like running in joggers through the apartment, eating ice cream directly from the liter pack and much Too often and too loud lousy 70s-Schweinerock hear. Ultimately, I said: You can have me, but you have to know all about me. I will not always act confident and correct and rather live out my needs too often. She looked at me very seriously for a very long moment and said, "Okay." And I thought: Okay? Wow. How is that possible? "It works because you are no longer 22," says Sebastian.
Sebastian is one of those friends with whom I can talk about love. We know each other from school, but we lost track of each other for a long time, so that he only experienced the end of my marriage. At that time he said, "You are driven underground if you deny yourself in relationships to please the other." He had met his first wife at the age of 19. It was a love with skin and hair, but also one that cost a lot of strength. When he was 30, the two made a couples therapy, in which Sebastian realized that he had to part. "I needed that view from the outside," he says, "our conflicts were a fishing net we got tangled in, we did not make it to the surface to catch our breath, we were just arguing, me was shot dead. "
Then he met Carola. He has fallen in love with her differently than in his first wife: "This time, unlike in the past, I was thinking along the left and right off the flow of love." In the new relationship, there was no longer "we against the rest of the world", but two who knew it was unhealthy to neglect friends and family for amorous brain nebulization. The love was not less, "I was not even less stupid, but with more than 40 you move in less surprising grid squares than 19. You are more finished than human". The likelihood that life or one's own personality will make an abrupt turn is much smaller. He was grateful for what he suddenly had. And for his love to happen again: "Who knows how many of these jokers you have in your life?"
Of course, Sebastian and Carola continue to make mistakes, but they find the balance between what does the other good and what is good for them: Because only who is at peace with himself, is a good partner. And you can not blame the other for making you feel good. "The other is not the solution to your problems," says Sebastian. "If you take that in, you're a better partner - and more attractive." Hardly anything is as sexy as a person who works on his subjects confidently and independently.
Marie also has her patterns
For a long time I felt responsible for Judith's luck and misfortune. I had to break this pattern of distress so that I would no longer have to suppress my own needs. That's what it's about when you start over - no matter which soup you're swimming in: get out of the pot and cook and swallow the same ingredients as a couple until you forget that love tastes much better and more varied than the eternal stew of unfulfilled expectations and mutual reproaches. Whether we dominate our partner or become too subordinate to ourselves, whether we listen too little or too much, whether we are over-planning or too haphazard, one has destroyed every failed relationship. If not the same crap should happen again as last time, we have to get out of our skin - as hard as that is.
Marie also has her patterns. Her idea of love and family has some Bullerbühaftes, she imagines: all children with us around a large table, preferably in the countryside, of course, all are always happy. With this ideal, she has already reached its limits in her old relationship. Her ex is not a romantic, rather a technocrat who wanted to trim the family for functionality and effectiveness. It is spontaneous, it insisted on minute-exact daily routines.That bothered her, but she did not fight for what she wanted and felt deferred and rejected. That had been so in their previous relationships. She had to turn 40 to stop herself from crawling into her shell in headwinds.
We accept different needs
We are now a good year together, our love is not fresh anymore. And clearly we have our conflicts. Marie would like to contract with me, that's probably the Bullerbü gene in her. She does not press me, but I feel the pressure her desire puts on me. If I were still in my old pattern, she and her child would probably have been living with me long ago. And sometimes I'm close to giving in. But then I listen again deep inside and realize: I'm not ready yet. I'm still attached to the rudiments of my single life, to the possibility of closing the door behind me and being alone. And that's what I stand for. Because I noticed that I do not really need Marie. But that I want her.
And Marie? Had retired earlier probably. In the meantime, she usually resists the impulse to feel unloved when my needs are different from hers. She tries to understand what's going on in me. Sometimes that does not work right away, but we both now know: This irritation is over. Anyway, I can handle it today.
Actually, I have less in common with Marie than with Judith. Marie does not like thrillers, prefers to watch regional cooking programs on television and goes to church at Christmas, to which I would not set foot on any day of the year. She likes it discreetly, where I love it gaudily. And vice versa. But it works well with us - so well that sometimes I feel like I'm just imagining everything. I do not have to fight for anything, I just get it. I can give without giving up. I can say what I want and think. I can say no and I realize: The world is not at all, I'm still loved. I know there are many who believe that love must be complicated, a daily struggle. I know now that's nonsense. Love is basically easy. That I had to be almost 50 years to learn that is probably one of them.
