<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" All right, today is the LAST day I will mention Jonas Singer--but holy baby Moses, I ran into him last night! Totally randomly! I went out to a hilarious play and who was standing outside with a group of friends after the performance let out but Jonas Singer himself?! (It&amp;#039;s like: What is my life? A sitcom?) He&amp;#039;d been out in the sun all weekend, and had gone the dark, gorgeous indigo color he gets; and he&amp;#039;d gotten his hair cut so, lucky me, he looked better than ever. We chatted for a minute or two--though how I managed to move my gaping jaw into a speaking motion, I&amp;#039;ll never know. And then, remembering myself, I introduced him to the friend I was with, Daisy Milliner (who was almost shocked as I was). Then Jonas and I hugged good-bye, and Daisy and I walked off to Angel Share for a drink. I felt a little shaky for a few minutes, but then I realized ... it was okay. I really was over him ...  * * * And yet, I DO just want to say one more thing. It came as SUCH a shock to me when, the other night, Jonas said he didn&amp;#039;t respect me. Because we were friends! I thought; friends ... with benefits. We had each other&amp;#039;s backs. There were no malicious feelings--in fact, there was a lot of demonstrated tenderness and affection and concern. And we weren&amp;#039;t going to hurt each other! We&amp;#039;d had very frank discussions about what we&amp;#039;re doing. I hadn&amp;#039;t acted in any way that was out of keeping of what we&amp;#039;d vaguely agreed to. And it occurred to me, almost immediately after I got off the phone with him--once I stopped crying and could think clearly--that what he&amp;#039;d pulled a so-called &amp;quot;reaction formation.&amp;quot; In other words, the person he really didn&amp;#039;t respect was himself. Let me explain. Many times in the past, he&amp;#039;d said that he worried I didn&amp;#039;t respect him enoug and that wanted me to. I suppose it&amp;#039;s true that, though I cared about him, I didn&amp;#039;t necessarily have a ton of respect for him. Which is not to say I disrespected him; he was very loyal and supportive to his friends, for instance; he worked hard; he ate healthily, worked out and didn&amp;#039;t booze much. But I thought he should focus more on a single creative goal, as I&amp;#039;d told him a few times, rather than spreading himself thin--trying to write a book, produce a play, and do his day-job. Pick one thing, I said, and really go for it! He didn&amp;#039;t like that advice--and maybe I&amp;#039;d unintentionally hurt his feelings by giving it to him. And when Jonas said he didn&amp;#039;t respect me, what he essentially said--more or less verbatim--was that he didn&amp;#039;t respect me for spending time with him. Which more or less boils down to him not respecting himself. So later on, when we&amp;#039;re emailing, I wrote to him: &amp;quot;As for respecting people ... I thought we had a certain agreement about our relationship and the bounds of it. I didn&amp;#039;t want something more serious. And I never thought you were a fool for spending time with me, or that I was a fool for hanging out with you--even if you thought I was a fool for spending time with you. In other words, I didn&amp;#039;t act in any way that I myself could not respect.&amp;quot; Hell. Is that me having a reaction formation? I think the bottom line here is that feelings and emotions are messy, and they often grow bigger than the modern-day-relationship boxes we try to put them in. It&amp;#039;s one thing to say &amp;quot;Yes, we will only see each other occassionally and have nice sex and be kind to each other and not get too serious.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s another to manage to resist growing feelings of attachment, disappointment, concern, affection, frustration, anxiety, discomfort--whether or not you&amp;#039;re a man or a woman. Do you agree? Disagree? xxx! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a2866/r-e-s-p-e-c-t/>