One of the more unsettling things a recent romance scam has taught me is this:
I suddenly saw the cycle.
The day after I realised what had happened, I was lying in the sun.
Doing what I now try much more deliberately to do:
noticing what my body was carrying,
staying with the feelings,
processing them rather than trying to out-think them.
Shock.
Disappointment.
Hurt.
Sadness.
Fear.
Anger.
Grief.
A lot of grief.
And then, after all that, something softened.
Finally, I could just lie there.
Relax.
Feel the heat on my skin.
Enjoy the peace and quiet.
And from that place, my mind drifted back to my previous relationship, which ended about a year ago after six years together.
And I could suddenly see the shape of the whole thing.
Meet someone.
Exchange messages.
Tentative meet-ups.
Committed meet-ups.
Lunch.
Dinner.
Museums.
Theatre.
Shopping.
Weekends away.
Spa.
Holidays.
Airport lounge.
Business class.
Five-star hotels.
Tuscany.
French Riviera.
Santorini.
Tenerife.
Dubai.
Work hard.
Pay the taxes.
Build the life.
Fall in love.
Struggle.
Try harder.
Fall out of love.
Process.
Recover.
And then finally,
lie down in the hot sunshine,
relax,
and enjoy the peace and quiet.
That was the moment something clicked.
The thing I was imagining the relationship would eventually give me was the very state I was already lying in.
Peace.
Quiet.
Relief.
Enoughness.
And yet, from within that peace,
I could feel my mind beginning to sketch the next cycle again.
That is what struck me.
Not only that a scam can exploit longing.
But that human beings can become attached not only to a person,
but to the life that begins assembling itself around them in the mind.
Not “imagined” in the sense of unreal.
Imagined in the sense that relationships are always partly lived forward through hope,
anticipation,
fantasy,
effort,
projection,
plans,
promises,
and the meaning we attach to what this might all become.
And sometimes, I think, what we are really falling in love with is not only the person.
It is the promise that, this time,
through love, effort, money, beauty, travel, companionship, repair, and all the rest of it,
we might finally arrive somewhere we can rest.
Somewhere we can stop.
Lie down.
Relax.
And enjoy the peace and quiet.
Once I saw that, I could not help wondering how often this same structure appears elsewhere.
In ordinary dating.
In long relationships.
In couples work.
In the way people can keep investing extraordinary amounts of hope, labour, patience, money, and emotional credit into what the relationship is going to become.
Not always because anyone is consciously deceiving anyone.
But because hope itself can become organised into a cycle.
I think there is something here worth understanding much more deeply.
Not only how emotional connection is created.
But how relationships can become organised around the promise of the very relief we are still learning how to give ourselves.