Amy Returns

Although I have other topics about which I should post, a few recent events have elbowed their way to the head of the queue. The return of Amy is one such event.

You may recall that Amy was a recent experience that battered my resolve with short term temptations. One of the key issues with Amy was that she appeared to be a more conventionally ideal mate for me than Jenny: her language skills, intellectual interests, social circles, experiences, and business acumen were more compatible to my world. At twenty-four her youth and beauty, her self-actualized accomplishments, and her aggressive rationality were impressive by any standard, and frankly beyond Jenny's attributes in those particular areas.

Amy had received a job offer from the fantastically accomplished Clovis, who was clearly impressed with her. And she had turned him down flat, electing instead to continue to travel as a free spirit and build upon her real estate holdings. I'm afraid that Clovis and her grandfather "Duke" viewed Amy's refusal to be bridled in a steady position as an unfavorable side effect of my poor treatment of her at Clovis' estate. They might be correct, but more likely they were giving me too much credit.

Although I had rejected Amy in a most heinous and ungentlemanly manner, Amy continued to try to make contact, to try to unravel the rationale behind my behavior. Emails and messages went unanswered. From time to time Amy sent me unsolicited photographs of herself in various locales with short, innocuous messages such as "Hi", and "I'm still here!" After about a dozen such unanswered messages I asked her to stop and there was no possibility nor desire for a relationship. The text messages, thankfully, ended.

After a recent tour of Eastern Europe, Amy sent me a message noting that she would be stopping in the US on her way to her first solo trip to Asia. She was generally unfamiliar with Asia and was asking for suggestions for places to go, stay, eat, and see. Jenny advised me not to answer. I took this advice and did not.

Not too much later I attended a private client services dinner event for a major US bank, to listen to the global wisdom of a former government and private industry economist. Little did I know that that her grandfather and I were both clients of the same bank though not the same private banker. Yes, sometimes the privacy in private client services can be inconvenient!

Lo and behold, Duke had brought Amy to introduce her to the bankers because she had just signed up as a client! While I was certain that her self-created net worth was insufficient to qualify, I assume that some combination of her relationship to Duke and the likelihood of a future inheritance gave some flexibility to otherwise stiff private client service rules.

I ignominiously tried to escape by way of a back door, but Amy saw me first. Her greetings were attention getting and crystal clear, making it difficult for me to depart in a dignified manner. My banker, Ana, learned that Amy and I had met in London, and then earned my undying enmity by rearranging seating so we shared a table.

During dinner Amy was forced to brief the entire table on her new life plan, although she was clearly aiming her narrative at me. She was planning to monetize her real estate holdings, aggregating them with some of her father's holdings and using structured finance for slight leverage, and then invest in REIT's and natural resource MLP's. Her move to more passive management would enable her to go to law school. She had taken the LSAT a month or so ago and scored 173 (which, judging from the response at the table, must be a very good score), and now was strongly focused on adding business law to her engineering background. Her top choice was Stanford. Of course the table was highly complimentary of her entrepreneurship and independence, and not a few comments were made about how similar we were.

Unlike the last meeting with Amy, I felt very little temptation over dinner. I must have been, as they say in the United States, over her. I truly did admire Amy and her accomplishments, though. I was thinking about how she would make somebody an amazing mate -- grace, beauty, drive, intellect, and rationality.

And these thoughts made me wonder about why Jenny and I were a good couple, especially when so many people around us thought we were ill-matched. But more on that later... here's where the story starts to get interesting.

After dinner Amy tried to corner me alone. Ultimately she suggested we share a ride to her hotel, after she cleverly got rid of her grandfather and was therefore without a ride. I suggested that Ana obtain a car for her, which she gladly did. Amy then dropped all pretense and, quite bluntly, told me that she wanted to have a conversation with me, and she would hound me to the ends of the Earth if I did not agree to meet for at least a half hour. So I agreed to have tea at a small cafe nearby.

Wow, did it go downhill from there.

Amy started talking about how lonely her life was. How her life was without love, and how even sex was an act of only temporary joy and no meaning. Over and over her theme was her solitude, her need for affection, and her feelings of loneliness.

And then she said that she wanted to be with me. She told me that she loved me.

Whoa. We hardly knew each other!

And then it became clear. Unlike the last time, there was no slow motion moment. There was no deep life implications to be evaluated and no directions chosen. In an instant Amy had turned herself into a portrait of a sad, lost, self-actualized soul, no longer the target of my lust, but the object of my pity.

I know Amy's solitude: much of my life was alone, without parents or mentors, without love or guidance. I know Amy's self-made loneliness: the nights I would cry out for love I would follow with days where I would arrogantly reject it as a weakness.

And I know the danger of Amy's iconoclastic pride. When I was young I fancied myself an unchained element, a whirlwind of force that was unbridled and unbroken. But this was a youthful deception, defining myself through opposition to measurable societal norms, an act which only empowered society to control my actions even more by defining the very boundaries outside of which I made my life. Which of us was fenced in and fenced out?

No, I understood this loneliness and the pride-driven manic-depression that could drive one to excessive achievement or to the final ruin. But I also understood that this was something every person has to solve within themselves.

And thus it ends. I left Amy composing herself after crying again. I left her as alone as when I met her. But I also left her with one piece of advice for people like her, and people like me:

Never love somebody until you are strong.

I hope it will help her.

It is not intended as a message of cruelty. Nor is it a sophomoric Ayn Rand-ism. There are certain personalities that by their nature will be a foundation upon which people will build their lives. Such people have a responsibility to become strong before they invite people to build upon their foundation. Some will make themselves strong. Many will fail and will be forever broken. But I believe it is an intensely personal journey. It is the nature of the beast that drives such people that taking help at their moment of weakness forever undermines the strength of their foundation, because most of that strength comes from that most wicked of the deadly sins: Pride.

Amy has enormous potential, if she can make it. I hope she can.

But it will be without me.