When I look back at those Christmas Day conversations, one question stands out more clearly than any other.
Why me?
It wasn’t false modesty.
I knew I had things to offer. I was intelligent, independent, loving and capable of being great fun. I wasn’t sitting there believing myself unworthy of someone’s attention.
But Stephen was younger than me, extremely attractive to me, funny, intelligent and intensely enthusiastic. We hadn’t even met, yet he already seemed remarkably certain about the potential between us.
I wasn’t certain at all.
That difference matters.
There is a version of this story in which I was swept unquestioningly into an intense new romance because I desperately wanted to be loved.
That isn’t what happened.
I questioned him.
I questioned myself.
I questioned the speed.
I reminded Stephen that however extraordinary our conversations felt, we hadn’t actually stood in front of each other yet. Digital chemistry was not physical chemistry. Either one of us might take one look at the other and realise that whatever had existed through a screen simply wasn’t there in person.
Stephen seemed far less troubled by that possibility than I was.
Why?
I still can’t know.
Perhaps he was simply confident in what he felt. Perhaps attraction worked differently for him. Perhaps he was caught up in exactly the same excitement I was, only without my instinct to keep one foot on the brake.
Or perhaps Stephen had a tendency to become certain about things emotionally before reality had been given enough time to test them.
That possibility wouldn’t have occurred to me then.
What did occur to me was that he might be a player.
I find that interesting now because it tells me my instincts weren’t asleep.
Something about the intensity had registered.
I was attracted to it, certainly. I loved waking up to his messages. I loved that he wanted to speak to me on Christmas Day when I had assumed I’d barely hear from him. His attention made me feel special.
But another part of me was standing slightly outside the excitement, watching.
What does he want?
Why is he so interested?
Is this real?
I even formed two competing versions of him in my mind.
In one, Stephen was sophisticated enough to know exactly how charming he was and was perhaps using that charm to get what he wanted.
In the other, he was almost the opposite: a slightly naïve, romantic man who desperately wanted connection and had finally encountered somebody willing to reciprocate his enthusiasm.
I preferred the second explanation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was also the explanation that fitted most comfortably with what I was beginning to feel.
Psychology sometimes describes this as motivated reasoning: we don’t necessarily ignore uncomfortable information, but our hopes can influence which explanation feels most convincing when several are possible.
That doesn’t mean the explanation was wrong.
Stephen may genuinely have been excited. I believe he probably was.
Those two versions of him might not even have been mutually exclusive. Human beings rarely divide neatly into innocent and calculating, sincere and selfish, confident and insecure. Stephen could be remarkably perceptive in some situations and strikingly naïve in others. He could understand the effect he had on people without necessarily understanding himself.
I was only beginning to discover those contradictions.
Something else happened that Christmas Day that would become important to me.
I showed Stephen an insecurity.
I told him I was conscious of being older. I’d had children. My body carried evidence of the life I’d lived, and I knew he could potentially choose somebody younger.
He didn’t dismiss my fear impatiently.
He reassured me.
Age was only a number. Attraction wasn’t simply about appearance. Beauty was only skin deep. His previous relationships seemed to support what he was telling me.
I believed him.
Why wouldn’t I?
There is a particular intimacy in revealing something you’re insecure about and having another person respond in exactly the way you need.
It doesn’t merely make you feel attractive.
It makes you feel safe being imperfect.
That was enormously appealing to me.
I don’t think Stephen necessarily understood the significance of what he was giving me in those conversations. I certainly don’t think every reassurance should now be reinterpreted as some calculated attempt to gain my trust. He may simply have meant what he said.
People can mean things when they say them and still struggle to live consistently by them later.
That distinction would eventually become very important to me.
But on Christmas Day, his words gave me another piece of evidence.
The unemployed man had confessed the lie about his occupation.
The man with a significant mental health diagnosis had told me about it almost immediately.
The younger man I worried might judge my ageing body was telling me that appearance wasn’t particularly important to him.
And the man I worried might disappear once Christmas arrived was messaging me throughout the day.
Every concern I raised seemed to meet a reassuring answer.
So my caution didn’t disappear.
It simply kept being satisfied.
That is different.
I sometimes wonder what Stephen was discovering about me at exactly the same time.
Perhaps he was learning that I would ask difficult questions rather than pretending not to have them.
Perhaps he was discovering that vulnerability didn’t frighten me.
Perhaps my willingness to listen made him feel unusually accepted.
And perhaps that acceptance intensified something in him too.
We were both receiving something.
I was beginning to feel desired without having to pretend to be younger, less complicated or physically perfect.
Stephen, perhaps, was beginning to feel that he could reveal imperfect parts of himself without immediately being rejected.
If that was happening, it isn’t difficult to understand why the connection accelerated.
We hadn’t met, yet intimacy was already being created.
Not physical intimacy.
Something potentially more powerful.
The feeling of being seen and still wanted.
And then we made our plan for the lake.
There is something wonderfully innocent to me about it now: two people beginning at opposite sides and walking towards one another, excited about the moment when they would finally meet.
Neither of us knew exactly where on the path that would happen.
We simply started walking.
Perhaps that’s why the memory has stayed so vivid.
At the time, the uncertainty was part of the romance.
I had no idea how much of loving Stephen would eventually involve walking towards something without knowing what I would find when I got there.
