On seasons of attracting married men.

(This photo was taken a few months prior to the breakup I write about. My phone is filled with a lot of images of this kind from that period. All I can see is how falsely pensive and actually sad I was.)

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He was seated near the entrance of the café. Our eyes met the instant I walked in the door. Not in some sort of Hollywood-esque eye locking scenario. It was a half step below that. We noticed one another. And we both knew we’d noticed one another.

I went up to the counter to order my iced coffee and proceeded to sit at the table adjacent to his. This isn’t as obvious as it sounds. The area for laptop working and coffee drinking was limited, so while we both knew, on some level, what I was doing, my seat placement didn’t reek of total desperation.

You look familiar he said. Do I know you? I’m Henry.

I don’t think so….? I said. The question mark was genuine. 

We did and didn’t know one another. We didn’t have mutual friends. Our Brooklyn lives had not overlapped. But we did know one another, in the way that mattered most in that very moment. Him, a semi-philandering, not technically married, but with a kid, 45ish guy unfulfilled by the everyday goings on of his newish upstate life. Me, a 35ish gal, still untethered (woefully so), caught in the aftermath of a drop kick scenario of a breakup, a complete and utter magnet for emotionally unavailable men.

His eyes scanned my features. As if my eyes and lips, limbs and hair were water, he drank. He drank and I loved it.

Five months before, my ex had flung me aside. He’d taken his time doing so. A few weeks before we broke up, he announced to me one morning as we were drinking our coffee, that he was going to be spending the next few weeks contemplating whether we should stay together or not. He’d let me know at the end of the month of his decision.

As if I were a piece of furniture that suddenly felt out of place in the living room, or a sweater he deemed no longer fit his personal style, he’d let me know.

To have the appetite (and attention) of someone at that point in time, felt…wonderful.

Was I in the arts? Where had I lived in Brooklyn? What was my story? He asked.

My story? My story was one I was not going to tell. I’d spent the last few months holed up at my mom’s house drinking red wine, eating pop corn, watching 90s movies and crying. My newly built house, that was supposed to be a weekend home for my now ex and I, sat empty, save for a pile of boxes in the living room. They’d been sitting there since late February when the movers transported them from Brooklyn. I hadn’t yet mustered the energy to unpack.

I built a house up here I said. They just finished construction. That was true, but still vague.

What do you do? I said, changing the subject.

Iiii’m an art dealer. Well, art representation in a couple different forms he said.

I could tell by the way he slid over the ‘I’ and tacked on “a couple different forms,” that he had his own version of lying by omission. I was fine with it.

Henry continued to ask me questions about my work and life that I only loosely answered. He said numerous times, I feel like we must know each other from somewhere. I later realized he kept saying that to create a reason to exchange numbers, to see one another again, to have this be more. Not wanting to give up his attention, I convinced myself that, perhaps, we did.

For most of the last month living with my ex, he’d given me the silent treatment. It would be years before I actually understood the magnitude of the emotional abuse, so in that moment, Henry’s gaze was a balm. To have someone be so openly transfixed with my very being — whether it was real or not — allowed me to briefly escape all the pain and grief I was swimming in.

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This wasn’t the first man I’d fallen in with who was “separated.”

Three years earlier there was Louis. We’d landed at the same high top at a work function, after which he wrote me an email saying he wasn’t able to take in ANY element of the event except for me. Not a single one. The chances!

We dated for a few weeks. He’d pick me up in an Uber Lux right outside my offices and whisk me off to quaint dinners at hole in the wall but chic restaurants in the East Village. He, always in a suit and me, in whatever skinny jeans I was shoving myself into at the time. 

We always sat at the bar. He always ordered. He had a way of placing his hands on me — a gentle placement on the small of my back, a firm grip that surreptitiously made its way up my upper thigh — that made me feel both super sexy and incredibly cared for.

Following each meal we’d make out on the street until I managed to peel myself away, falling into another Uber he’d called for me. I realize now he wasn’t just ordering the cabs to be nice, he was ordering them hoping he, too, would be joining me on my venture back home across the Brooklyn Bridge.

One night, instead of having dinner downtown, he insisted we switch boroughs. 

Let’s go to Brooklyn! He said. I figured he was just being polite and wanted to go to a place closer to my turf. But after dinner, feeling guilty he’d gone all this way, I finally agreed to take things further. I don’t recall ever agreeing to make that my apartment, but he was already punching the address into Uber before I could say anything. (I now know it’s because we couldn’t go to his apartment, because “his apartment” was still the one he shared with his wife and kids).

On the ride from the restaurant to my front door, I caught him texting his wife. She was in Atlanta for the weekend with their two boys and texting to let him know they’d landed. I knew exactly what was happening and I didn’t stop it. I turned my gaze to the window and watched the brown stones go by. I wasn’t ready to release the fantasy.

The fantasy wasn’t that Louis would leave his wife and choose me. Frankly, I didn’t like him that much. The fantasy was the world I got to live in within his clutches: One where I was doted on and delighted in, with zero vulnerability required on my part.

Things were “easy,” with the Louis’s of the world. I never questioned his affections. I knew he was obsessed with me — he made it known. Through text, through email, through the way he quite literally clutched me.

And at the time, not knowing how deathly afraid I was of intimacy, his marital status made our dalliance incredibly safe. Wildly hot and incredibly safe. We could never get THAT close, and yet I always knew how much he wanted me. Of course, it wasn’t that he really wanted me. He wanted the way he got to feel about himself around me. But none of that mattered in the moment.

——————

The second I met Henry, the exact same lights turned on. 

We met for coffee again a few days later. The words, “Maybe this will be different…” rolled around in my mind as I crossed the street to the café.

Similar to Elliot, the first time I met Henry, his relationship situation was vague. He made it seem like he and his partner were both free to see other people. The second time we met the tune was more, “Well I would like to see other people. She’s unaware of my intentions.”

I stood up when he said this. 

I can’t do this I said.  I need to go.

I recall little of what he uttered as I gathered up my bag and my barely drunk coffee and headed for the door. My eyes welled with tears. Not just over the shame I felt for, once again, getting slightly entangled with a spoken for man. But for what I was doing to myself. I wasn’t just saying to Henry, I can’t do this. I was also saying, to me, Clara, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.

As fate would have it, I then proceed to run into Henry everywhere. At the Amtrak station, at that same coffee shop, in the parking lot of the hardware store. 

Later that summer, as I was exiting the town pool, his black Suburban rolled up.

Clara he said.

I can’t talk to you I said, scurrying to my vehicle. 

Even though I was ostensibly saying, “Leave me alone,” there was also a part of me that wanted to crawl inside. Not just of his oversized SUV, but the feeling, the fantasy. The fantastical world where I could hide and continue to punt the internal work fueling my debilitating fear of intimacy.

With Louis, with Henry, it wasn’t that I reached a point of not wanting them. As if they were a slice of chocolate cake, the desire for the taste was still there. I didn’t know what I needed to do. I just knew I needed to stop doing that.

——————

At some point in the last few years, I stopped running into Henry. He didn’t move. Instagram made me aware he’d gone into local real estate. Not surprising given the murky career in the arts.

As if my hunger for emotionally unavailable men — the ones that kept me comfortable, but also locked in a state of perpetual adolescence — were a scent, that scent started to fade. And with it, the men.

It wasn’t because I opted to look this pattern directly in the eye. I was too ashamed. It was more of a

Not that

Not that

Not that

Over and over and over again.

The world began to present me with men less like Louis and Henry. None of them were married, but still, few of them were there. Many were still in hiding. I could hide, too, and with them, if I chose to. Sometimes, I did. Eventually, I stopped making that choice.

I’m still fighting my way out of hiding, in all aspects of my life. Thankfully, but very annoyingly so, my husband doesn’t let me hide. I still marvel at this reality.