Member-only story
Why We Fall for the Ones We Can’t Have
Eleven months. That's how long I was in love with a woman who had a boyfriend and a dog they'd adopted together on some rainy Sunday. I knew all of it. She told me herself, on the second day we talked, laughing about the dog's terrible haircut. And still I rearranged my whole week around the chance of bumping into her at the coffee place near my office. It felt like a job I'd never actually been hired for. I showed up early anyway.
The brain loves a blank space
When you only get pieces of someone, a text at midnight, a look across a crowded room, you write the rest yourself. And you're a generous author. Real people come with morning breath and strong opinions about parking. The person you can't have comes with neither, because you've never been close enough to find out.
Mine never once complained about my driving. Of course she didn't. She never rode in my car.
A coworker once told me she'd stopped dating anyone she could picture too clearly, which sounded unhinged at the time. Maybe it still does a little. I get it now, though. Fantasies don't forget birthdays or leave dishes in the sink. Real people do both, usually by week two.
