Love, Actually

I just finished watching Love, Actually for the second time. It's a movie that appeals to my strongest romantic emotions.

I haven't blogged in awhile, but that's because I've had a blog I've been struggling with, but some of it is so personal that I wasn't sure I wanted to post it. Love, Actually has inspired me to post it and my concerns be damned!

"I am no superman
I have no answers for you
I am no hero yeah that's for sure
But I do know one thing
Where you are
Is where I belong
I do know
Where you go
Is where I wanna be"--Dave Matthews Band, Where are you going?

This lyric sums up a powerful emotion I've been having about a woman that work's on my floor. C. is short, slender, with thick dark curls framing her face. She has a bright , cheery disposition that is both magnetic and contagious. She seems to take pleasure in taking pleasure in life. I find her captivating.

She has a boyfriend, but that doesn't really matter to me. It's unlikely I would pursue her anyway. There are two basic reasons for this: love in the workplace is just asking for trouble, and that horrible quaking awkwardness that overtakes me anytime she's around. Neither of these issues are insurmountable--but for right now I'm happy with where things are: glowing adoration on my end, and complete unawareness of my existence on hers.

To me she is what Ayn Rand called a "pin-up girl of the spirit." Insofar as I know nothing about C., save her name, her sense of taste and style, and her sunlit personality, she represents the ideal of femininity; she serves as a living symbol of my capacity for adoration; she is a concrete reminder of the reverence I feel for experience of romance. In the worship of all she represents to me, I both confirm and celebrate that part of me that longs for romantic love.

If I don't find another romance for awhile, then I may decide to approach C.. The risk involved in that is far more than simply a wounded ego: I risk that she may show herself to be unworthy of the adoration that I feel for her. This consideration alone is not justification to stay my advances; but considered in the context of the other obstacles, this is reason enough to continue my adoration from afar, without making any attempt to get to know her better.

I think that I'm beginning to see why it is so hard for me to approach women in general. I do not have low self-esteem, and it has long confused me why I feel such anxiety around women I admire. My hypothesis as of tonight is that my anxiety is caused by a fear that I will be disappointed in her. I want so desperately to meet a woman that can appreciate me for the reasons I wish to be appreciated, a woman with the perception to discern the subtleties of my expression, to see the passion enmeshed in an otherwise apparently impassive glance. In all of my relationships with women in all my life, I have never been understood or appreciated on my terms. I think that on an emotional level I'm so convinced that it's not even possible that in most cases I'd rather not confirm it. Call it a "malevolent romance premise."

This could be a major breakthrough for me. If I'm right, then for the first time in my life I'll have a weapon against that anxiety: that weapon being the knowledge that it is possible to be appreciated the way I want to be, that it doesn't matter if this or that particular woman doesn't "get" me, and that epistemologically, any woman is going to need time to develop that kind of understanding and appreciation--just as I will need time to develop it for her.