It starts with something small. A hand resting on yours a second longer than it needs to. Someone lowering their voice when they speak to you, even though there is nobody else in the room. The way they watch you deciding what to order.
You feel seen. It is a dangerously lovely feeling.
Then time passes. One evening you say something you have never said before. You don’t want to go out. You want to go out on your own. A habit that used to make you both laugh begins to wear you down.
The other person puts down their glass and looks at you.
“You weren’t like this before.”
It might be a frightened question. It might be an accusation. From across the table, the two can look very similar.
What drew us in
We also fall in love with a way of being. The independent one who never asks for anything. The funny one who can find a joke even while missing a train. The one who makes you feel like the only interesting person in the room.
It feels good to be desired for something that is part of you. Less good to discover that, after a while, it has become your shift at work.
If you were the easy-going one, you have to keep it up even on a terrible day. If you were the one who didn’t want a commitment, the evening you ask them to stay it feels as though you have changed the terms of the contract.
“But you were the one who said we were happy like this.”
Yes. We may well have meant it. Before tonight.
The person we fell in love with can change. That doesn’t mean they were lying at the beginning.
Desire doesn’t stand still
Some encounters begin long before a kiss. In the wrist revealed as someone rolls up a sleeve. In a pause on the phone. In two chairs sitting close together that neither person moves.
Desire can be specific in ways that make us uncomfortable. You are drawn to a voice, to confidence, even to a certain distance. A few months later, that distance is precisely what you can no longer bear.
You want to get closer to the person who won you over by keeping you a little way out. They are behaving exactly as they always did. You are the one who now wants to come in.
There isn’t always someone to blame. Unfortunately, that makes the conversations much more complicated.
Sometimes desire changes within a relationship that continues. A familiar touch takes you by surprise again. On other evenings you don’t want to be touched, and you cannot explain it without causing hurt. The body doesn’t consult the anniversary calendar or turn up on time out of politeness.
The part of us they liked best
Thinking about Amanda Lear and the word “muse” brings me back to a question: how much room is left for a person when we are deeply attached to what they represent for us?
It happens far from famous photographs, too. You can become someone’s proof that they can still seduce. The cheerful interlude in an orderly life. The quiet place they return to after looking elsewhere for all the chaos they could find.
Perhaps you liked that part. It made you feel important. Then one evening you have something to ask for too, and discover how little room there is in the place you have accepted.
It isn’t enough to accuse the other person of casting us in a role. Sometimes we furnished the room ourselves, hoping someone would decide to stay.
Staying without holding someone still
There are also people with whom change can find room. Perhaps with difficulty, after an argument that went badly and two days of talking about nothing but the shopping.
“I didn’t know that about you.”
Said like that, it can still open a conversation.
A happy relationship has moments less photogenic than we imagine: asking again, listening to an uncomfortable answer, admitting we were taking something for granted. Discovering that the person beside us still has more to tell.
That can be sensual too. Someone who has known you for years looking at you with a curiosity you thought belonged only to the beginning.
The difficulty is that changing can also mean no longer wanting the same things. Not every distance can be bridged by a good conversation. We can understand each other and still be unable to stay together.
And what about the person waiting?
The right to change doesn’t erase what we have promised, or spare us the discomfort of talking about it. “That’s just how I am” is already a difficult phrase. “I’m different now” can become just as convenient an excuse if we use it to leave the other person with all the consequences.
The person beside us may feel hurt. They may not want to follow us. They don’t have to see a breakthrough in something that, to them, feels like a loss.
This is the part that spoils the perfect lines about change. The freedom we ask for ourselves belongs equally to the person who might say no.
Perhaps that is where it starts: when we stop using the past as evidence for the prosecution. When we can say “I wanted it then” without pretending to want it still. And hear “I still want it” without treating it as a flaw.
There are still two glasses on the table. The conversation could end in any number of ways.
If I met you today, without knowing who you used to be to me, would I still want to get to know you?