It seems every book I read lately has the infamous “love triangle” somewhere imbedded within, no matter how minuscule it is to the story, it seems huge to me. It’s like something is always constantly reminding me of the world’s widespread infidelities. Of course, this has been happening for years now. There’s real life love triangles, movie and TV triangles, and book triangles. We are inundated with them.
I realized some 9 years ago that in order to survive this affair mentally, I had to learn how to survive all of those instances of affairs mentally too. And as many of you know it’s hard to see aspects of your life played out in front of the world on Tv and in books. So I took a step back and figured out how to deal with what surely would show up and again and again for the rest of my life.
The old me would have watched a movie like The Bridges of Madison County and been totally drawn in to its romanticized affair. The new me tried my best to still be drawn in….alas that is actually part of the problem. I’m not the old me anymore. I’m the new me. I have to stop trying to breathe life into the old me and breathe that life into the new me. The old me no longer exists. And the new me is basically a newborn. The truth is I love the Bridges of Madison County. I loved it then and I love it now….I just am watching with these newborn eyes. I wanted to take offense that she was cheating on her husband. I wanted to hate him for knowingly advancing on a married woman. But, in the end, it was something my husband said to me that caused me pause. He said “it just happened”.
For the longest time I was angry at that statement. I took it as a cop-out, a weak excuse, no excuse. But then I watched the Bridges of Madison County again. And then last week I found myself watching it again. I had long ago accepted the “it just happened”. But, watching this movie again, so far removed from my own actual experience, it became what it once was. The most heart-wrenching thing about this movie was the similarities I could see in our own “love triangle”. Nobody did anything wrong in the marriage. It actually did “just happen”.
The scene at the end when she sees him through the truck window….maybe I had forgotten how that went down, how that must have felt. I wondered how her husband would have felt if he knew? I know how I felt knowing. There have been millions of times that I wish I had never known. But, I do know how Francesca and Robert felt at that moment.
It’s a difficult thing to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, especially when you’re traumatized yourself. But, maybe it’s a necessary thing.
Love triangles are probably named wrong too. They are definitely wreck-tangles.
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