drmstream[writing]

When­ever we find, in two forms of life that are unre­lated to each other, a sim­i­lar­ity of form or of behav­ior pat­terns which relates to more than a few minor details, we assume it to be caused by par­al­lel adap­ta­tion to the same life-preserving func­tion.
Kon­rad Lorenz

One hot Fri­day after­noon a long time ago I drove up the West Side High­way in my Dat­sun B210 with two young women that I had just met. The traf­fic was heavy and we were at the start of the long drive to Mary­land. One of the women sat beside me in the pas­sen­ger seat. By the time we were halfway across the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, I said to myself, “I’m not going to let her get away. I’m going to marry her.”

We did, a lit­tle more than a year later. After seven years, our mar­riage ended in a con­fla­gra­tion of despair and anger, emo­tions that had been breed­ing from that very first day.

What could have hap­pened in that car ride? I was 24, a teacher at a pri­vate school in New York. She was the same age and did the same thing at a school two blocks away. We both taught English.

We were dri­ving to a foren­sics tour­na­ment where stu­dents from var­i­ous schools gave pre­pared speeches and were judged. I was an advi­sor to our foren­sics team. She was an advi­sor to theirs.

Her father taught his­tory at another school in New York. My father taught Eng­lish at a school in New England.

I was a writer. She was a poet.

She knew peo­ple I went to school with. She had had a crush on the mid­dle son of my sister’s god­fa­ther. She was the mid­dle child of seven. I was the old­est child of six.

She laughed. We spoke short­hand. We were start­ing out life. We were enthralled.

I’ve never really under­stood how the con­nec­tion could have sparked so hotly and been so mis­guided, sol­der­ing a union between two souls that saw the world through com­pletely dif­fer­ent fil­ters — dark and light, vio­lent and soft, inde­pen­dent and depen­dent, harsh and kind.

When I read the quote from Lorenz, I expe­ri­enced a moment of understanding.

I had mis­in­ter­preted our com­mon ground as a “par­al­lel adap­ta­tion to the same life-preserving function.”

The sym­me­try of facts, the com­mon­al­ity of expe­ri­ence and the syn­the­sis of lan­guage were mark­ers to me that her jour­ney through the world had taught her to value the same things that I had learned to value. The work of get­ting to that point in my life had not been easy and I was nowhere near done. It was lonely and uncer­tain. It was risky. It was hard.

I lit up inside at the idea that I could share the jour­ney with some­one. And I burned brightly at the feel­ing that I would walk with some­one who could under­stand and share.

The mis­take was that we shared many of the same life expe­ri­ences, but our adap­ta­tions were not at all par­al­lel. Not at all.

Being together wasn’t some­thing that brought strength to each other. It required a con­stant expen­di­ture of will.

I didn’t learn this les­son until much later.

When I met T,. I expe­ri­enced a phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion that I had never felt before.

Today I under­stand that it was the thrill of recog­ni­tion. I was with some­one who was walk­ing that par­al­lel path of adaptation.

Noth­ing has been the same in my life since.

I have one wish. I wish that I could find a sim­ple check­list for True Love that could be used to find con­tent­ment and avoid dis­tress. I wish I could give our chil­dren a fil­ter that they could run their infat­u­a­tions and excite­ments through to under­stand whether they and their para­mour had expe­ri­enced those par­al­lel paths, were aligned in how they saw the world, in what they value about peo­ple and each other.

The pain of being in the wrong love can only be described in images and metaphor. Def­i­n­i­tions and sim­ple descrip­tions fall short. But we all know the experience.

Being loved is the great­est thing I have ever expe­ri­enced in the world. Giv­ing that same gift is the great­est sat­is­fac­tion. I wish I could teach it.