“If you really loved me, you’d just know,” she says. And it’s then I know it’s over. That we won’t make it very much longer.
Because I’m too old and too tired to deal with that kind of magical thinking anymore. It just leads to heartache on both sides.
On one hand, it’s wonderful when someone anticipates your needs. When they learn you and your mannerisms so well, they can surprise you in ways that delight you. Or offer reassurance before you really need it.
But it comes with a high cost. A dark side we don’t talk about.
Because no one guesses right one hundred percent of the time. No matter how much they love us, we love them, or both. It’s called guessing for a reason — it’s not telepathy.
And there have been many times when people have guessed completely utterly wrong — with terrible consequences. A passing frown while you’re eating dinner in response to the memory of something a coworker said earlier turns easily into an act of war — when your partner assumes it’s crowning resentment for them, for whatever just happened, whatever they just said or did.
And a magical thinker has little to no room for reason when you insist that the expression was about something else entirely, something that crowded your imagination for mere moments and would have just as quickly left, had they not turned it into a point of contention.
When you confront such a magical thinker on this point, they’ll cling to their own feelings. Because their feelings are magical. They love you — so they just know. They know what you are thinking better than you do. Because of love.
So when she says it, “If you really loved me, you’d just know,” there’s nothing left but to walk away. Because I’m too old and too tired to play that game anymore.