Dinkaltranen

“Your understanding of friendship is wrong.”

I’m sorry?

“What you’ve described here is a fantasy. An unrealistic and distorted dream, impossible to come true. And yet, you cling to it, wailing as though you will not inevitably wake.”

It’s not a dream. I’ve seen this before.

“And what came of it? It fell apart. Your expectations make it inevitable for it not to feel like you are betrayed and a righteous victim who can then say that no one is ever their true friend. It is not honesty. You are making people sign a virtual contract that they never see, and when others cannot meet it, you burn it, despite whatever you have being usually fine. Worst of all much of the time the reason for you doing this has nothing to do with things people actually did to you, but your own contextual overreactions. Your refusal to acknowledge others’ wants or to be able to manage your neuroticism is what makes you a bad friend.”

But that is the kind of friendship I want. I want a relationship where we can grow together but separately. Support one another, share whatever we can, until we die.

“*laughs* That’s not friendship. That’s love. Not just that, it’s also a horrifically idealised version of love. Not even adult Disney children believe in that version of love.”

You can hug your friends. Just because I hugged someone once in that way doesn’t mean that I want to hug my friends that way. It just means that the potential of intimacy, of touch, set off that memory.

“The way you want to hug people, that memory, is sex. Becoming one like that is sex.”

That was not how I was going to hug them. That's not how I wanted to hug them in that moment.

“I gave that to you, didn’t I? And you hated it. You realised you didn't like it, protested and eventually lay there like a doll. You got what you thought you wanted.”

Sex isn’t hugs.

“The way that you need them are.”

I guess. Sex does involve a lot of the things that I want. But what I described, I think it’s more emotional than that. Sex is all encompassing, sure. That hug was not sexual. It was the act of someone starving for intimacy.

“You need to get laid. You need to fall in love, and get laid.”

I know. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.

“Most of your friends have girlfriends. Why don’t you?”

You know precisely why.

“Why don’t you say it?”

What is there to say? I have nothing to offer. I’m physically unfit, unattractive, poor, neurotic, needy, talentless with no qualifications, and I’m old.

“You said the same things about friends and now look. You have some new friends.”

That took me years. That might not last. Girlfriends are much harder than friends. The reason I made friends is because there is much looser requirements from me. There’s also less competition.

“Say the good things that you offer.”

I’m cognitive, creative, and wise. I live in an okay place, and I communicate decently.

“That’s it?”

That’s it. That’s the points I will concede.

“Okay. How did you get me then?”

I’m pretty sure you were the one who chose me. You shouldn’t joke about raping me like that. You even saying “get me” shows a fault in my psychology around what being in a relationship is.

“I’ll try then. You are emotionally sensitive, maybe not in touch, but sensitive. You care about feelings. You are kind, and can be funny. You are intelligent and interested in ideas. I chose you not because I found you attractive physically, or that I was secretly a paedophile – I wasn’t. I saw me in you. I was curious. I had ideas. And when I explored them, I found out I actually really did like what I found in you. Sometimes that’s all that it takes. You are a curiosity sparking person, and that’s a lot of the work of drawing people to you. Maybe I wanted to rescue the part of me that I saw in you. But the point is that you’re interesting.”

I’m not sure I’d describe our relationship as ideal, and you know my ideals…

“That’s precisely the point. Your ideals are wrong, completely, comedically, astronomically. But you can adjust them as you communicate within a relationship. You can learn and change.”

Most people don’t tolerate that. I’m too old to have to be taught.

“You will live a lonely miserable life if you think so. Just like everything else, you give up because you are too prideful and ashamed of learning, of being seen as ignorant, for what you actually are.”

I’m not sure I can survive a relationship. I barely can survive friendships.

“Take it slow. You can’t assume anything.”

You know, for a torturous inner voice of an ex-lover, you can be quite helpful sometimes. If you just dropped the antagonism and didn’t send me into a frozen mental hell once a day, I would probably listen to you more.

“That’s a bad idea. This advice is good, but the rest of me is bad. I can freely admit that.”

So, I can expect you to torture me tomorrow, as always?

"Same time tomorrow."