Will someone look at me this way?

I miss sometimes that no one will ever fall in love with me again. I will never get to be that new in someone's eyes, exciting. New friendships can get there a little, but they are by their nature limited. I have spent years building with a friend a foundation set down in a passionate weekend with a lover.

I miss less falling in love with someone else, because I do that often, though usually with people I will never meet. I will obsess over the work of some singer or actress, feel fluttery over her, and then get over it within a month. Parasocial relationships only go so far and I would feel slimy writing fan letters.

(Usually, these people remind me of Amber, so it is crushing on her by proxy.)

I am not new to Amber. She is familiar with me. I am a roommate and relation in addition to the more positive aspects of our marriage. You are not looking with fresh eyes at the man whose underwear you put in the washer, the one who keeps trying new (sometimes imperfect) recipes for you, the one who comes home sweaty and exhausted from a run when you are trying to relax, the one who wakes you with his 4 AM insomnia, the one whom you have coaxed from depressive spirals. There is too much behind us for Amber to see me--who I believe myself to be now--in front of her. Taking that step back would cut into time that she needs for studying, caring for the pets, and deservedly relaxing.

Of course she loves me and is in love with me, but it bears the smallest shadow of that first infatuation, full of passion and blushing. She knows all my stories, and those are the majority of what I have to offer anyone. Whatever new knowledge I acquire, I share with her as a point of conversation, but there is only so far that teaching stories, ridiculous paranormal theories, and details of famous crimes take one. Stopping her and untangling something in my fiction is wasted effort on both our parts.

There have been a few people with whom I have attempted a platonic connection over the last several years. Most have fuzzed out or reached a point where one or the other of us realized it was not going to work. For a few, this was when they realized that my reiterations of "No, really, I am not polyamorous, and we will not be sharing a bed or the backseat of your car" wasn't my playing coy. Years before, I would have kept feeling responsible for them, wanting to keep the friendship going in some fashion. I gave that up and do not regret it. They were not the right receptacles for mutual newness. Let them drift into a name I recognize, but little more.

The Internet is predictably awful for this. I see other people in their cultivated lives, and I do not fully see the wonderful woman next to me. I have been going out of my way to keep my computer closed. (I have several computers and computer-adjacent objects, but I have conditioned myself to only see one as a computer and the rest as work machines.) Amber will look at her phone through meals where we watch Netflix, when she will occasionally looks up and asks me what is going on. She admits as much about the Internet. It takes away all newness, all potential. It is where I least want to be and where is easiest. I am there, but I am far from present.

I wouldn't rather be skimming for superficial newness than in the ocean of my marital love, but it does make me feel old and forgotten. It is curious to think that my time of being utterly new to another person is behind me.

This is not dissatisfaction with my marriage; I adore Amber. It is only this awareness that, if I am lucky, this will be my only and last romantic relationship. No one will have that electric jolt of realizing they are falling for me, which feels as though, despite being better than I ever was, I am not worth the infatuation. I want that whirlwind delight.

When I look fondly on Amber and she notices, she is more apt to jokingly snap, "What?"

I don't know for certain that she does not do this so I will assure her of my attraction, but she pretends to find it cheesy. I let her know that she does not have to ask, that my answer is not likely to vary. We have found these entrenched routines and do not break from them easily. We also say when one of us leaves for work or class, "Be awesome, be safe, be loved, be beautiful." Amber began this one day, but I feel uneasy the few times it has not been said and will go out of my way to say it. It is like a spell and something that is only ours.

There is not a newness that matches that, what we have built. Familiarity doesn't have to calcify, doesn't have to be a death sentence to passion and discovery.

last watched: The Boys
reading: Blindsight