“We came out together. It felt safe because we had similar backgrounds. We’d both been in long-term relationships with men, so we didn’t need to explain ourselves. Everything felt comfortable. She was the chaser at first. She had no brakes. It was a Big Love: really fast, really deep, really far. And she was the one who first verbalized it. She put a name to it. We came back from a holiday in Beirut, and she said: ‘Now this is a serious relationship.’ And from that moment things began to change. Now I’m the chaser. I always feel anxious about her true feelings. I see every little thing as a rejection. Like when she goes to sleep without saying goodnight. Or when I see her spontaneously smile with her children, in a way that she doesn’t with me. And then there’s touch. I need it. It helps calm my anxieties. It gets me out of my mind. It can be really small, just two seconds on the back of the neck, and I can feel grounded again. But without it I feel complete rejection. And she didn’t have a problem with it for the first six months. But now she says she feels a bit cramped. She needs a little space. And then I wonder if it’s me. I think of my dad. Always needing hugs, always needing kisses, always needing reassurance, too much, too much, too much. My mother felt suffocated. So I think: ‘Maybe it’s me.’ And honestly, when I think it’s a problem with me, for a moment I feel reassured. Because that means it’s not a problem with us.”
(Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
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