When he was married he knew just by a touch when things were going right or wrong. They had lived so long together, so close together, so as one it seemed in many respects they were one. Not everything was right all the time. They had differences. They had fights. They had lives separate from one another. Yet they always came back to the fact while they could survive alone they couldn't live alone. They needed one another, to live, to enjoy the joys of life. They really didn't need any others although others added to their mutual living, laughing, loving.
Then she left. She didn't really choose leaving it just came upon them, over the years, until there was nothing left so she just slipped into eternity.
He went some time being alone then he found someone who while never replacing her filled the void that was there after she left. There was excitement, a feeling of mutual attraction that fed upon a touch, a kiss a sharing of intimate details of their lives.
There came a time when their relationship just wasn't enough so the urge to rekindle old friendships which might have even been relationships intruded upon their idyllic time in Eden. No longer was there sharing, touches, kissing. The relationship continued but on a cooler, less intimate level and that is the way it continued until it reached a point where he realized there was no romantic relationship at all. The fact of the matter was, as he thought about it all, they had a relationship but one that was quite different from the one they had for the first three years that they knew one another.
They definitely were in love but the Greeks knew very well that there were different kinds of love and that's why they had more than one word describing the term we have which is one word, love.
With his first love affair that lasted 50 years he experienced all the six stages the Greeks referred to. But with his love they never lost the first stage which made their relationship special and unique because what they shared was intimacies that bind each one to the other so that they become "one" as Jesus said. They shared all forms with each other and only some with others. When the time came for separation there was no regrets, only a true sense of loss on his part.
With this relationship he was in now they shared Eros but she now didn't want to remember that as if it never happened. This is a form of death he didn't like experiencing. He guessed what they share now is Philia and Pragma which wouldn't be bad if that was all they ever shared but that wasn't the case. Her exclusion of their affair is like saying they never lived or shared that experience and of course to him that is like saying I was drunk and really would like to forget doing something I regret.
He had regrets but not the same as she. He regretted that they lost something that was like magic and could've bloomed into real magic if she wanted it but somehow how she didn't want it. He saw this as an end to an affair. She didn't! and he is in Limbo, that stage of life that is neither here nor there, just hanging suspended in air until something has to happen which causes it all to drop suddenly.
There's gotta be a better way to end a love affair! At least he thought so!
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