I just got done watching the movie "The Night Listener"
I had read the book over a year and a half ago. I highly recommend you pick up the book as opposed to the movie, but it wasn't a bad adaption... The story is about an author who in the midst of the break-up with his partner of 8 years, begins to build a friendship with a young fan, but the fan is only a voice on the other end of the phone... the story's mystery starts to unfold as the protaganist begins to wonder if the troubled young man is real or the creation of the woman who purports to be his care-taker.
The story got me thinking about the nature of relationships in general. How we sometimes choose to not see things about people that we care about that are staring us right in the face. Gabriel (the main character) needed so badly to love someone, and have some to care for, he had a hard time seeing the wool being pulled over his eyes. Instead he choose to ignore alot of red flags, like the boy and his caretaker's voices being near identical.
How much of the people we care about do we invent in our own minds? (listen closely for the Carrie Bradshaw Voice-Over Narration)
I remember reading this book on a cruise ship headed to Halifax with my Ex and his family, and as I read about the protaganists partner moving out, and saying that he needed to try new thing, and try being on his own. Fear rose in my chest while reading that, knowing that my then-boyfriend could very likely pull the same trick. Yet, I loved him and had invested two-years and alot of love and care into the relationship. I choose to ignore those fears, and hold on to the idea that we loved and had promised to be together forever.
How much of the promise was what was said between us, and how much was it my wanting someone who "knows me" and is "there for me." The Ex continue tosend out more signals about his trepidation regarding the future of our relationships. I would drive in my car and sing loudly to songs about heartbreak. Song with lyrics like "...And I'm afraid and I can't breathe and I'm in love with you, but you are not with me..." but I never made the connection of why I felt the song so deeply and my relationship. We were simply hitting a rough patch and if we survived it- we could survive anything.
My parents have been married 29 years, and still love eacthother. My idea has always been get married young and start your family. Love takes hard work. Though its great to have that roll model of stability, its set my standards pretty high for what I should have... made me look for it in places where it isn't. If my parents can do it, why can I?
Attachment theory states that when we are infants, we see ourselves as one with our mothers. As our brain develops, we begin to create 'virtual other' templates for how other people will be. But when these road maps for other people are formed we can't see the world from any perspective but our own. So, do we ever truly learn to separate ourselves from others.
Especially when it comes to our important relations, can we ever get out of our own way, and truly know another person?
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