What's "Love" All About, Anyway? (from "My Short Stories (Book One)") - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

What’s “love” all about anyway?  First, you’re attracted to someone and you want him (or her, if you’re a guy) like you’ve never wanted anyone before in your life.  Then, you start to resent this person because they don’t appear to reciprocate your own feelings.  Then, to complicate things even further, he may already have a girlfriend or wife, or you may already have a boyfriend or husband.  Yet, despite being in an existing relationship, there seems to be nothing on God’s Green Earth to prevent anyone who is already in a perfectly happy relationship from falling in love with someone else, just like that, or vice-versa.

To me, “love” is many things and has many facets.  It can be very complicated, to put it mildly.  How is it that you can live with someone you’ve loved for 20 years, and yet, not really know them?  And, yet, how is it that you can meet someone else and, in the blink of an eye, fall for this person, just as fast as it takes for you to draw your next breath?  Not only that, you feel like you “know” this person and have known him (or, her) all your life.

You know, we often tend to fall for the wrong person though.  Why is that?  The object of our love may be too old, or too young, or too thin, or too fat, and that’s just regarding their looks.  I know that we shouldn’t be judging others based only on their looks, or age, or educational level, or bank balance, or whatever.  But, that’s the way we humans are.  The fact is all of that is totally irrelevant in the “game of love”.  What is relevant is that “chemistry” exists between the two of you.  Is it there now or not?  Was it ever there?  If not, why not?  I’d like to share my own story with you about a relationship I once had with a young man.

I had some real feelings for a young man I once knew.  I’ll call him Art.  He was a massage therapist.  We hadn’t known each other very long (only about six months), but I definitely felt there was a chemistry between us.  I’d felt it since the day we met.  Of course, he already had a live-in girlfriend to whom he appeared totally devoted.  But, he was very attractive to women, in general.  And, he was a lot younger than me – too much younger.  Could I have picked a more inappropriate person to fall for than this much younger man?  I doubt it.

However, it wasn’t a romantic relationship, just a very warm friendship.  God knows what might have happened to me if it had been a romantic relationship.  That would have scared me to death.  But, I really didn’t have to worry much about that part.  He either wasn’t interested in me that way, or he was doing his best to hide any feelings he might have had for me, or he was just doing his job in a very professional, yet caring and empathic manner, the way any good therapist would.

We were just friends; not such an unusual thing for me, since I tend to like people of all ages, male and female, anyway.  But, he knew me mostly as his patient.  And, I knew him mostly as my massage therapist.  I would go to see him at least once a month for pain management.  This was due to the two serious car accidents in which I’d been involved – one in which I had been driving and one in which I was a passenger.  I had continued to require ongoing pain relief, and to manage my pain actively, rather than over-using pain killers.  I had gotten his name from my family doctor, had started going to massage therapy, and had met Art as a result.

In some ways, Art was very good for me, both as a therapist and as a friend.  But, in other ways, it was very frustrating for me.  I liked him a lot, but I wasn’t really supposed to like him too much.  I mean, he was my therapist.  This fact caused me to ask myself some questions:  What should I do?  Quit therapy?  Change therapists?  I was in a real conundrum over this for quite a while but, finally I decided to just keep going to see him once or twice a month, as I had been, and to deal with any potential problems as they arose.  But, none ever did. 

You see, I had absolutely no idea of how he actually felt about me!  When he was with me in his therapy room, he was the consummate therapist, always very professional in his work.  But, he also quietly listened to me talk about my life, asked me pertinent questions where appropriate, and, generally, appeared to like me a lot as a person.  I was the “ideal” person for him to have as a patient.

But, the last time I went to him for a treatment, he seemed very reserved and quiet, unlike his usual demeanour.  After my treatment, he left the room, as usual.  I got ready, and then I went out to the front desk to book my next appointment.  He wasn’t his usual joking self that day, for some reason, but I didn’t know the reason, nor did I ask, and I left the office.  I chalked it up to a bad day.  Anyone could have one of those.

It turned out that Art was planning on leaving this clinic to work at another location, somewhere much closer to where he lived.  That made sense to me, since it was a long way for him to travel to this particular clinic on a daily basis.  But, I suppose he was not quite ready to tell his patients about his decision, and then just leave us all behind at this clinic, even though he knew this change was a good and necessary one for him.  As it happened, he left the clinic two weeks later and I never saw him again, though I think of him often, even to this day.

Whenever I think of him, I think that, despite being very attracted to him physically, I was glad that we never did anything sexual together.  I had always been used to dating younger men, as much as 10 years younger than me.  Somehow, it had never bothered either me or my date because I’d always looked a lot younger than my actual age and my date just assumed that I was actually younger and I never bothered to correct his impression of me.

But, with Art, it was different.  First of all, he was only twenty-one, and I was thirty-something at the time.  I felt like I’d be ‘robbing the cradle’, so to speak, if I got involved physically with him.  Friendship was fine though because it’s acceptable (to me and society in general) to be able to be friends with people of all ages.  And, I was very good at that.  So, I was glad, in the long run, that we had remained platonic friends and that now, I could remember him with a lot of warmth. 

Art had always treated me very well, and had shown me compassion, empathy, a warm sense of humour, and the kind of love that you find only between two people who get along very well together.  I will always think of him with gratitude and love and friendship and compassion.  I do sincerely hope that he’s happy living with his girlfriend; that he has lots of friends (patients) at his new clinic; and that he gets along well with all of his new patients there too.  Who knows?  Maybe, one day, we’ll run into each other again somewhere, sometime.

published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.