The Devil You Know

My first girl friend was a type, a certain kind of shy girl who knew how to get what she wanted by not asking.   By waiting for you to offer it. If she accepted, then you knew (or guessed) that you were getting somewhere.

Of course you never had actual verification from her.  And she never gave up the pussy, which would have been strong circumstantial evidence that she really liked me.

She kind of obsessed me during my high school years, even after I said something wrong and she slapped me and wanted nothing more to do with me.

My first wife was of the same type.  Demure, quiet but with a fire in her eyes. She never told you exactly what she wanted you to do and I had to guess, predict, offer things over and different, whether it was a new kind of restaurant, going out on an work night to a new neighborhood, get a new job, try a new position in bed.  She wouldn't let me know I was on the right track until I was far along, too late even to back out ("You know, I never really liked Thai"), at the edge of the gangplank and having to plead to be let back on the boat.

Everything I learned about her likes and dislikes were an accident.  A perverse but addictive kind of unraveling mystery she savored.  And that I did too.  Her measured reluctance to participate in the decision-making process was its own kind of decision making - she had me wrapped around her finger, hopelessly under the thumb of her unspoken whims.  Out of my mind to please - and whipped.

A girlfriend in there later lasted only 3 months, and there she was again.  I pursued her and she smiled and said if you want and I thought every decision was golddust. And I wasn't standing on any real ground.  The path ahead was shrouded in fog.

It was all the same co-dependent neediness, trying to be in charge but at the mercy of someone else, something impossible to control or know, movement without purpose.

We repeat our own bad habits because we're comfortable with them, we know the hurt and we know how to nurse the hangover the next morning.  Who wants to go find a new unexpected kind of damage?  They made me feel good, they made me feel wanted, they gave me something to live for (and to worry about).  I made love to them well too.

But then I sought out a different companion and it was a new and unfamiliar path. When things went wrong, she took part of the blame.  And she warned me ahead of time when she didn't like something.  And when she did.  If we traveled too far together she didn't pull the rug out from under me.   

If I fell she caught me.  Even thought I might want to crash on the rocks below in self-immolating defeat.