Several years ago, after spending six months in Australia and New Zealand, I briefly moved back to Italy, among other things, to be with my boyfriend at the time.
We had met the previous New Year’s Eve in Rome. He stole a kiss from me in the middle of Piazza Campo de’ Fiori, after we had drunkenly danced the night away on the streets surrounding the Colosseum (romantic, right?).
A working class, Turin native, he was instantly mesmerized by the exoticism of me. Having barely left the Italian soil in his lifetime, he could hardly wrap his head around the notion that, a few years his junior, I had lived in India and America and was about to jet away to Australia, on a whim, to work with horses.
Month after month, he eagerly awaited my calls from the other side of the globe. My tales of kangaroo meat and partying on Bondi beach brightened his days of humdrum manual labor and routine, as he described it.
Although I begged him time and time again to drop everything and join me, the potential lack of stability was just too drastic for him. “But we’re young! We’re in love! Who knows what could happen?” I argued.
I eventually gave up and went back to Italy, stating that I had no specific plans for the future, but secretly wishing he’d ask me to stay.
And stay I did, forcing my way into his reality the way I do with any other reality I want to be a part of. Albeit in a very naive, un self-aware manner: I truly believed I could fit in and pass as the typical Italian girlfriend.
The first thing I did as la fidanzata was to move him out of his mother’s apartment. I hadn’t had sex on anyone’s parents’ bed in years, and I intended to keep it that way.
Then, I attempted to befriend all of his guy friends’ girlfriends. But once I realized it was way more fun to sit at the dudes’ end of the table and drink, rather than sit with the girls and mainly talk shoe shopping, I settled for befriending all of his guy friends instead.
Although there wasn’t much to be found in terms of a paying job in Italy at the time, I kept my spirits up and pursued ordinary dreams like becoming a flight attendant for Fly Emirates, “you can come visit me in Dubai! I’ll get, like, super discounted flight rates.”
The Emirates thing didn’t work out, so I took refuge in housewifing. I honestly didn’t mind it! I would spend the days puttering all around our little love nest, painting, cooking, writing, listening to music. Perhaps it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but at that moment I was there and I was happy.
He was not.
Within a few months, his adoration turned to resentment and we began to engage in a fucked up break-up, make-up dance that lasted far too long.
It seemed that the more I tried to adapt to his world and mold myself into a version of myself he could be comfortable around, the more he pushed me away.
I couldn’t understand what his problem was, but I was certain that he still loved me. So I cried, and begged and foreshadowed: “You are going to regret this. If you keep doing this to me, one day I will reach my breaking point, I will leave you, and I will never come back.”
So one day I reached my breaking point, I left and I never came back.
I’d been mending my broken heart in Texas for a few months when he oh so conveniently decided he missed me, couldn’t live without me, needed to be near me…
He took his first plane to America and spent a few weeks here in profound culture shock and everything else shock.
In the time it had taken him to figure out the way he truly felt about me (a few months), I had built a new life for myself complete with friends, a job and a great house in a great city (Austin).
Our visit was lovely.
More time went by, and I pointed out to him that since me following him had worked out so disastrously, the ball was in his court and it was his turn to move. “We’re young! We’re in love! We could get married, you’d be an American citizen, who knows what could happen!”
In the time it took him to carefully consider my offer (more months), I met someone else and moved on with my life.
Giovanni spent the following year profoundly heartbroken, fully regretting his inability to pounce on any of the opportunities I’d offered him.
I felt sorry for him. I also felt relieved that I’d given it my all, tried, failed and persisted until there was nothing more to be done. In short, I was happy I didn’t feel regret in any way, shape or form.
Looking back on it, I think I understand why Giovanni had resented me so much. Being with me must have been like a daily reminder of how much he longed to change his life but was too afraid to do so. A classic example of opposites attracting, perhaps he believed that being with me would provide him with the courage he needed to live life to the fullest, but once he realized that change had to start from within, he resented the fact that he couldn’t keep up with me.
I also think he felt like he was holding me back.
Before and since Giovanni, my life has been a series of leaps of faith and impulsive decisions made for the sake of not regretting not making them.
In contrast, my love life has since consisted (mainly) of rejection from men who seem to find the idea of me alluring, but the reality of me not so much.
A few years ago I asked a good friend of mine why guys won’t date me. “It’s like, we see each other a few times, we have fun, all is great and then they fucking disappear or give me the classic non-committal guy spiel.”
“My dear,” he replied: “guys don’t date you because you’re not dating material. You’re marriage material. A guy meets you and soon after realizes that shit, if I keep hanging out with this girl I’m not going to be able to let her go. I’m going to have to marry her! And of course they aren’t ready for that, so they scram.”
This same friend and I eventually became romantically involved. It’s like, we saw each other a few times (several, over the course of six months), we had fun, all was great. And then he gave me the classic non-committal guy spiel.
I’m very hurt, but I’m still fearless.