from The Bridge across Forever
Richard Bach

"We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!"

Ch. 10

Months rippled by, and as I lost interest in love, the place reserved for my hidden soul mate was taken by a different idea emerging, an idea as rational and flawless as those upon which my business affairs now turned.

If the perfect mate, I thought, is one who meets all of our needs all the time, and if one of our needs is for variety itself, then no one person anywhere can be the perfect mate! The only true soul mate is to be found in many different people. My perfect woman is partly the flash and intellect of this friend, she’s partly the heart-racing beauty of that one, partly the devil-may-care adventure of another. Should none of these women be available for the day, then my soul mate sparkles in other bodies, elsewhere; being perfect does not include being unavailable.

"Do you know what I learned from you? I learned what is possible, and now I must hold out for what I thought we had. I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me. That or nothing. I realized that what I'm looking for is not what you're looking for. You don't want what I want."
"What do you think I want?" I asked.
"Exactly what you have. Many women you know a little and don't care very much about. Superficial flirtations mutual use, no chance of love. That's my idea of hell. Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, Richard, in which there is no love. Horrible! Leave me out of it."

Ch. 30

Dearest Richard,

It's so difficult to know how and where to begin. I've been thinking long and hard through many ideas trying to find a way...

I finally struck one little thought, a musical metaphor, through which I have been able to think clearly and find understanding, if not satisfaction, and I want to share it with you. So please bear with me while we have yet another music lesson.

The most commonly used form for large classical works is sonata form. It is the basis of almost all symphonies and concertos. It consists of three main sections: the exposition or opening, in which little ideas, themes, bits and pieces are set forth and introduced to each other; the development, in which these tiny ideas and motifs are explored to their fullest, expanded, often go from major (happy) to minor (unhappy) and back again, and are developed and woven together in greater depth; and recapitulation, in which there is a restatement, a glorious expression of the full, rich maturity to which the tiny ideas have grown through the development process.

How does this apply to us, you may ask, if you haven't already guessed.

I see us in a never ending opening. At first, it was the real thing, and sheer delight. It is the part of a relationship in which you are at your best: fun, charming, excited, exciting, interesting, interested. It is a time when you're most comfortable and most loveable because you do no feel the need to mobilise your defences, so your partner gets to cuddle a warm human being instead of a giant cactus. It is a time of delight for both, and it's no wonder you like openings so much you strive to make your life a series of them.

But beginnings cannot be prolonged endlessly; they cannot simply state and restate and restate themselves. They must move on and develop – or die of boredom. Not so, you say. You must get away, have changes, other people, other places so you can come back to a relationship as if it were new, and have constant new beginnings.

We moved on to a protracted series of reopenings. Some were caused by business separations that were necessary, but unnecessarily harsh and severe for two so close as we. Some were manufactured by you in order to provide still more opportunities to return to the newness so desire.

Obviously, the development section is anathema to you. For it is where you may discover that all you have is a collection of severely limited ideas that won't work no matter how much creativity you bring to them or – even worse for you – that you may have the makings of something glorious, a symphony, in which case there is work to be done; depths must be plumbed, and separate entities carefully woven together, the better to glorify themselves and each other. I suppose it is analogous to the moment in writing when a book idea must be/cannot be run from.

We have undoubtedly gone further that you ever intended to go. And we have stopped far short of what I saw as our next logical and lovely steps. I have seen development with you continually arrested, and have come to believe that we will never make more than sporadic attempts at all our learning potential, our amazing similarities of interest, no matter how many years we have together. So the growth we prize so highly and know is possible becomes impossible.

We have both had a vision of something wonderful that awaits us. Yet we cannot get there from here. I am faced with a solid wall of defences and you have the need to build more and still more. I long for the richness and fullness of further development, and you will search for ways to avoid it as long as we're together. Both of us are frustrated; you unable to go back, I unable to go forward, in a constant state of struggle, with clouds and dark shadows over the limited time you allow us.

To feel your constant resistance to me, to the growth of this something wonderful, as if I and it were something horrible – to experience the various forms the resistance takes, some of them cruel – often causes me pain on one level or another.