She only became interested in me after reading an article I had written about her hometown. Without that, she never would have met me, she admitted.

And when I wrote a story about our date, she fell in love.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I had been dreaming of having a boyfriend who is writing,” she said, and I was happy. And she was happy with me writing instead of selling my time to some company and wasting life in an office. She didn’t seem to mind that this meant eternal poverty (for me, not for her). She even cleared the table in her bedroom, so I could use it as a writing desk.

When we first went on a trip together, I wrote about it, naturally, for I had deemed it a wonderful experience. She was not happy. “I want you to remove my photo.” I did. “I don’t want you to write that I am hot.” We negotiated that “attractive” was a more adequate epithet.

“I love the way you write,” she said, “it’s wonderful.”

The next day, she woke up, saying that she couldn’t sleep all night because of my story, that I was abusing her for entertainment and that she wanted to be taken out of the story. I rewrote it.

A week later, she had found a new grievance: “Why do you write about other people?” I explained that I write about people whom I meet on my travels and in life, on the train and in parks. “I don’t want you to write about other women,” she tried to censor me.

“Honey, half the world are women. I can’t write all-male stories as if we were living in a Taliban dream world.”

“I want to do everything to support you as a writer,” she said every day.

On the next trip, a long-time reader wanted to meet up in person and show me his city. He was male, so I didn’t see any problem. Oh, how naive of me. “I don’t want our romantic trip to be turned into a business trip.” I pointed out that he was going to give us a tour of the town, that this was not business, not least because I hardly earn anything with this little blog, and that I didn’t even know in advance if I could turn the trip into a story. I almost never know this in advance. Still, “I can’t enjoy our holiday like this. It’s too much stress.” I asked what she wanted to do instead. “Just walk around and meet nice people,” she said and I said nothing, but thought “????”

I’ll cut the next 24 hours short, but they included everything from “I don’t want to be in the way”, “I absolutely support your writing”, “why don’t you go alone?”, “but I love you!” to “I am so confused,” which was finally something I could agree with.

“Why are you taking a notebook and a pen?”, she asked one evening as we went into town. “To possibly jot down some observations. It won’t be about you.” Again, she complained that I didn’t separate writing and romance. “I will only take out the notebook while you are in the bathroom.” She was in bathrooms a lot. But she didn’t find it funny. I left the notebook at home, wondering how a girlfriend could have failed to notice my memory.

She took her camera, of course, and I had to pose for photos. She loved Instagraph.

The following month, we went to some rainy island. I didn’t take a notebook, no camera, I even tried not to memorize too much. I wanted to focus on us, enjoying the time together with no distractions at all. After the trip, she said: “You could write a wonderful story about this island!” And she was disappointed that I didn’t produce something out of thin air.

On the last day of the statutory three-month trial period, she terminated the relationship. In writing, of all ironies! Maybe she was angry that I could write better drama than she could produce, try as she might.

Links:

• And it had begun so beautifully.
• More stories about writing.
• More romantic stories.