Long-distance love

My boyfriend smells good and I can't imagine kissing anyone else, but he lives in New Zealand! Our advice man consults on this and other conundrums.

By Cary Tennis

Nov 6, 2001 | Dear Cary,

I've been in an on-off relationship with an amazing person for the last three-odd (very odd) years. For the last two my sometime partner has lived far enough away that it takes two full days of travel and a ton of money for us to see each other. We have seen each other seven times for around five months total in the last two years. Our time together has been fairly normal: We love each other, we fight, we go to the movies, that sort of thing.

The problem is that three weeks before we're set to see each other, my partner decides that it is impossible for us to have a relationship, and that we need to break up. At the same time, there's always some other woman who begins to look interesting to him, and he decides that he wants to see what will happen with her. I cry and lament and accuse and get very worked up about everything, because I love this person, and the tickets are nonrefundable. Even though we're broken up by the time I get there, we end up back together while I'm visiting, and then afterward he falls into a deep depression and decides that we should be together after all. I resist for awhile, then my resolve weakens, and I agree that we should get back together. Things are great between us for several months, then I buy nonrefundable tickets for a visit and it all happens again.

I bought the tickets almost a month ago and am due to visit in three weeks, and he's decided that it's impossible for us to be together, and has begun to be interested in someone else. I ought to be done with this person. Only, I really love him. He smells so nice, and he's so smart, he's got that great accent, and I can't really imagine kissing anyone else. I was ready to move to New Zealand. Is there any way out of this other than saying goodbye and not looking back? Should I refrain from seducing him on this upcoming visit?

Dummy in NYC

Dear Dummy,

This is not a relationship, but a ritual. It sounds like quite an engaging if painful ritual, but it bears roughly the same resemblance to a relationship as a Civil War battle reenactment bears to the Civil War.

Relationships are stories, and in stories people go forward and change; if that doesn't happen, adults lose interest. (Kids have more staying power.)

You could consider a certain kind of sex as the ritual part of a relationship, where infinite repetition is possible with but the tiniest diminution of effect: It works every time. Here, you put on the French maid costume again and then discover me in the bath playing with myself, and pretend to be disgusted, but then you come over to the bath and see I was actually playing with my little toy boat, and you ask me if you can touch the boat, and I say no, but then I squirt you with the boat and get the front of your maid's costume all wet ...

Gee, let's do that again.

Far be it from me to tell you that instead of staging romantic reenactments like scenes from Ibsen you should be having serious conversations about your future with some enterprising young man who learned to swing dance in prep school, has a house in the Hamptons and takes his emotional growth seriously. But if the reason you're writing to me is that you sense something troubling, or even dangerous, in your own behavior, please be aware that there's also probably quite a payoff, and giving it up may not be easy. Of course you can simply stop cold turkey, but the lures of such entanglements are obviously not trivial, or you would not have bought the tickets.

I would submit that such strange repetitions allow us to shrink the aperture through which life's peril shines on us. We all can handle so much reality, so much of the raw terror of our own mortal, solitary insufficiency in the face of God or the void; it is only in measured glimpses that we can stare at our own need to be loved for who we are. Why risk the shattering defeat of seeking a perfect counterpart who sees us as we see ourselves and recognizes the unrepeatable constellation of dreams, memories and desires that is our deepest self, when there are these shiny, hermetic adventures to be had? How much more prudent to invent a game to play that has certain elements of the grand romance -- a heady cologne, long journeys by air, a remote and pristine island country, a beguiling accent, the threat of a rival -- and then play it out a few times within a set of clear and sturdy boundaries: the return ticket, the practical impediments of being different nationalities, the tacit pact of noncommitment two hungry and frightened lovers make.

You ask if there is any way out, and of course there is: The exit is right in front of you. You just don't go. You just quit. But tell that to a smoker or a heroin addict. What I'm suggesting is that it's more than a strange entanglement; there's an element of addiction, but it's not going to kill you or even give you prematurely bad skin.

Do you want a real relationship like other people have? Actual relationships have their advantages, but they're a lot of work. If the ritual pain becomes too much to bear, or the ritual pleasure wears thin, you might feel compelled to undertake the truly daunting quest for an actual life partner. Until then, if you can afford it and it doesn't make you unbearably sad, why not go this one more time? After all, there's a lot to be said for a man who smells good and has an intoxicating accent, even if three weeks before every visit he breaks up with you.

And if you are actually far more disturbed by this pattern than you let on in your letter, then let this be my whispered signal to you: Yes, absolutely, you can stop. Just don't go. Sell the nonrefundable ticket. But the thing is, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing unless you think there is, and you don't have to quit unless you want to.

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