This is the second part of this post. It doesn’t make sense to read it if you haven’t read the previous one first.
It turns out the most powerful deity is… the God of TV Series. And this is the story of his revenge on me. All my life I’ve criticized romantic comedies. I’ve always considered them “sci-fi movies for desperate housewives”: men who change (yeah right), magical and predestined encounters (boom), and trips to beautiful places that change your life (unclear if with or without Alpitour).
Well, a brief summary of the first episode: I meet a 21-year-old bisexual contortionist with the face of a sweet child and the soul of a slut. We share the same values, we want freedom, fun, and sexual experimentation. I invite her on vacation. I realize she’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman. After 20 years, I fall in love again.
So, tell me if this story doesn’t sound like the plot of a B-grade romantic comedy, with the middle-aged man in crisis falling for the young girl.
God of TV series, I know I’ve sinned. Many times. But you’re a real bastard.
The Return and Back to Reality
Once back, I ask her if she wanted to keep seeing each other or if we should consider the experience over.
She says, “Paolo, I really enjoyed being with you. We’re far apart, but I want to make time to keep seeing you.” Beyond the vacation effect, which makes everything better, it genuinely seemed like she was gradually falling for me. I felt a real connection.
The Americanina goes home and we keep in touch.
She writes to me every day.
She sends naughty photos.
We play some long-distance games (I remote-controlled her at the office, with a ruler, a mouse, and a highlighter in honor of the famous post “The Horror… The Horror” by Bane).
The post-vacation mood effect is devastating. Beyond a hormone spike where I could have banged a women’s volleyball team in an afternoon, I’m hyper-energetic, a current constantly runs through my body, I walk like this:
But it won’t last long. What happened next pierced me like a spear.
One day she tells me she’s sleeping with a guy. You’ll remember that from the start, we agreed on an open relationship. And I don’t hide that since returning, I’ve seen some friends. So absolutely normal and legitimate.
The problem is that since she started sleeping with the guy… she started replying to me more and more slowly. Once I wouldn’t have even noticed, but the truth is I was already head over heels and without any limits. I, who have always been in control of myself and master of relationships with women, now couldn’t avoid things I knew would create problems.
I start doing stupid things.
First stupid thing, I tell her I’m her best choice:
The fact remains that, the day after she slept with the guy, she starts replying to me more slowly. Day by day, the hours between messages increase.
Every time she apologizes, but actions speak louder than words (my old life rule: watch what they do, not what they say).
Let’s be clear: normally I’m just happy that my girls have their freedom if we’re not in an exclusive relationship. I’ve always encouraged my FB/MLTR to sleep around and I’ve always appreciated when they shared the experience with me. You know my worldview, from which this blog originates.
But this time it was different.
Her sleeping with the other bothered me.
But not out of jealousy: if she had proposed a threesome with the guy, I would have been in.
My annoyance was tied to the idea of losing her, of being a second choice, a gap in her schedule. Of not being important enough.
It had been many years since I felt insecure. I was becoming a shadow of myself. Far from Magnificent, I was losing shine day by day, showing insecurities and doubts that didn’t belong to me or I didn’t know I had.
I tried not to let it show. But she’s not stupid, she sensed it, and surely this “jealous” attitude of mine must have bothered her.
Meanwhile, two weeks have already passed. We meet. She comes to Milan to see me. Sure, she misses the train after sleeping with the guy (!) but still arrives with a slight delay.
I don’t ask anything, but she gives me an explanation (which I won’t share for privacy).
Inside, I consider her behavior disrespectful, perhaps a clear attempt (conscious or unconscious) to ruin the relationship, or simply evidence that I wasn’t that important.
I put on a brave face, say nothing, welcome her with maximum enthusiasm. But inside, I feel misaligned and consider my behavior not up to my values.
Initially, I blamed myself a lot for this, then I realized that when you love, sometimes it makes sense. That you can’t spend your life keeping score but need to leave room, freedom, and choice. And it’s a sign of strength, not weakness.
But it’s also possible it was all in my head, the head I had lost.
Anyway, for the next day, I had organized a threesome with her and a remarkable 23-year-old.
According to Fil, the threesome was a mistake because it was yet another “Magnificent” gesture where I wanted to either show her how cool I am or “humiliate her by screwing another girl in front of her.”
I was complaining about being a second choice, having emasculated myself by accepting such disrespectful behavior without telling her to get lost… and he tells me: “If you realize it, you did all these things… she only did them after you did.”
It’s possible that this came across, but in reality, it’s far from my intentions: I saw it as an experience that could bring us closer. One of the best things about the vacation was commenting on the girls we could have together.
In the threesome, the focus for me was my girl, the other was just a chick I brought along to have this experience with the woman I loved.
My Slutty Baby arrives.
I’m not well, I feel sick.
I think a bit about the other guy sleeping with her. Mostly I think about how she seemed more distant.
Headache.
Complete failure, second mistake.
My dick goes on strike.
The whole vacation no problem, but as soon as we got back, it didn’t want to get up.
By now I’ve realized that my dick is much wiser than me.
I have a guru dick.
It gets things instantly.
It knew we would hurt each other from the first day back from vacation.
I had lost my mind, and the dick was trying to sabotage the relationship, knowing I would end up under, that she wasn’t as into me, that my actions and thoughts weren’t aligned with my desires.
They say “dickhead” in a derogatory way, but my dick is the Einstein of dicks.
In these conditions, I cancel with the 23-year-old before meeting her, missing out on a threesome that would have been epic and not winning Barney Stinson’s belt.
The Americanina and I still have a nice weekend.
She’s sweet, we shared some nice moments, I still see her into me. She’s much more physical, cuddles me, shares a lot with me, makes plans for activities together, doesn’t have particular demands on how we spend our time because she’s just happy to be with me.
But I’m worried about not being able to sleep with her. Our relationship was born from and for that, so it’s really disruptive. Especially considering the other guy keeps going at it (and she gives me the play-by-play: “Oh, you know, he surprised me”… but damn it! Why are you telling me?)
The point is that — when she’s not with me — I feel her distant.
More and more distant.
She replies to me later and later. She sees the other guy more frequently (who lives in the same city, it’s also convenient). I was giving everything and felt like the person on the other side was drifting away.
My Attitude
Probably, none of this mattered to her. In the end, she behaved according to the conditions we agreed on, she was still present, and we kept seeing each other.
Maybe I wrote the epilogue of the relationship with my behavior.
Let’s be honest: I lost my mind.
Normally, I wouldn’t have given it any weight. It’s understandable that people come and go, get distracted by new things, and then come back to you.
The girl told me I gave her stability, serenity, that I was always sure, always intellectually stimulating, unlike any of her peers.
Well, falling in love like this, unprepared, made me just another peer; depriving her of what she liked in me.
I started behaving stupidly. To be clear, I didn’t make scenes or do anything strange. But my responses were sharp, I was less available, a bit prickly, I told her our relationship was unbalanced, made her feel in debt, obligated, etc.
Funny: today my only regret is not giving more, not doing everything I wanted to do for her. I regret what I didn’t give and feel miserable for some of my behaviors.
Anyway, I was longing to see her again.
Clearly, everyone had their life and commitments, but there was a certain pressure from me to see each other soon. The worst thing for a girl who loves freedom, experimenting, and flying free.
A week passed, we agreed to see each other the following weekend.
The End of Everything, in the Blink of an Eye
I write to her Tuesday morning to confirm we would see each other on Saturday. She sends me a message Wednesday evening, after 36 hours, talking about something else, without addressing the topic and without answering my direct question.
I understand.
I don’t reply.
She understood.
She writes to me again in the night between Thursday and Friday:
I reply in the morning with this message:
You know the interesting thing?
She never saw it. Not even now.
She never opened my messages again.
I tried calling her after a week, but she didn’t answer or call back.
I thought maybe I had screwed everything up by not reaching out the last week. I waited a few days and then sent her a message on Instagram, apologizing and requesting a call for clarification/goodbye.
Never seen.
She ghosted.
She’s gone.
She denied me any explanation.
Many weeks later, I see her story on Instagram where she’s doing her second bungee jump. I wanted to write her a nostalgic message, but… she notices I’ve seen the story and mutes my stories.
I got the message: she doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her anymore.
Insisting on contacting her would have bordered on stalking. I acknowledge and don’t contact her anymore.
Nothing, I screwed everything up.
I lost her.
I delete all the photos from my phone.
I try to forget her.
I suffer like a dog, for weeks.
I can’t accept that she’s gone like this. I can’t accept never seeing her again.
But — worse still — I’m also afraid she’ll come back, given the upheaval she caused me. I, who have always been the master of my world, I who decide the destinies of many people, rendered powerless by love for a girl.
I do a huge amount of work on myself.
I have the relationship coach, Filippo.
The personal development coach, Pietro (the one with the life-changing sessions).
And I also go for all the checks on my dick with all possible specialists:
- the urologist says everything is fine (and pockets €400)
- the endocrinologist says everything is fine (and pockets only €80)
- I even go to the MTV sexologist, the one from Loveline with Camilla, who in the meantime has become President of the Sexologists Association, etc. He also confirms everything is normal (and I don’t remember how much he pockets, with a 25-minute visit, half of which spent sleeping)
- the other girls I go with (reluctantly) experience that everything is fine (at least these don’t cost me!).
In the end, it wasn’t just with the Americanina.
I probably emasculated myself, accepting a situation I didn’t like for fear of losing her.
I find many unresolved issues.
I understand that this story is also the result of removing the previous block I had, like a dam breaking and releasing a huge amount of long-held things.
The Healing
With much effort and pain, I resolve everything.
Today, I can think of her in a very clean way.
I no longer feel pain, only love, acceptance.
I no longer feel anger for how she behaved in the end, for disappearing like that (in fact, I now understand her, given my behavior).
I no longer have anxiety towards her, fear of having made mistakes, fear of having lost her. A single message, misunderstanding, or a single behavior is not enough to drive away someone who truly cares about you. She left because that’s how it had to go, the conditions were missing.
Above all, I’m no longer terrified that she’ll come back and devastate me.
I accept with love both that she may never be seen again and that we may meet again someday. I no longer want to change her, I don’t crave to contact her (although I’m occasionally tempted to do so).
I’ve been with other women, had other relationships.
I’ve restored the vacation photos on my phone: I had deleted them before, they hurt too much. Now I look at them with great pleasure, I feel those emotions again, it’s a very sweet thing, a feeling of mine that no one can ever take away from me.
I use them when I work out, try to project them onto the barbell, maybe I’ll fall in love with sports 🙂
I’m just sorry I didn’t tell her these things.
I just want to tell her:
Three months later, I still can’t stop thinking about you.
After meeting you, I exploded, I discovered that behind this Magnificent mask were several blocks.
In the end, the broken one was me. I’ve worked a lot in recent months to review my life and still feel like I’m in the middle of the sea.
Meeting you wasn’t — as I told you — just the best thing of 2020 (I still laugh at your joke) but of at least the last 10 years.
You gave me infinitely more than I gave you.
I just want to thank you and
wish you, with all the love I feel,
to find all the love you deserve.
Have a good life, my oniony stew 😉
Conclusions
In a way, it’s a shame it turned out like this. If I hadn’t fallen in love, the Americanina would have been the perfect partner in crime for the kind of life I love and talk about on this blog. We would have had a blast together, hit the clubs, shared girls, kind of like I do with the other women in my life.
Who knows how many new experiences and emotions we would have shared together.
From this perspective, losing her is a shame and a terrible waste.
On the other hand, falling in love was an experience I really needed, a crucial step in my journey of personal growth and authenticity. I’m glad I did it with her, who deserves all the love in the world.
It’s true that I suffered, but I’m a better man for it. And for that, I can only thank the Americanina. She’s no longer mine, maybe she never was, but she’ll remain etched in my heart as a precious gift.
Today, I know things happen as they should. This story was meant to go this way. And I’m totally fine with it.
This experience has also made me open to fully loving again, to truly committing to a relationship.
Goodbye Americanina and Thank You!
Damn it!
PS.
Actually, months later, I reached out to her again. Here’s the account of how it went.
** The opening image is copyright of the artist Luis Quiles
