Misalliance. Dating story no. 04

I do not know whether he really was that famous, but to her he was a star, the sun without which everything alive on earth would die. And to him she was the earth that the sunlight warms — otherwise, what would be the point of shining? And it was also a misalliance.

Him: young, handsome, earning well. Girls with model looks were always circling around him — fans and simply clients, very well-off by the standards of their little town; he worked with actresses and with models, devised styles and images and created beauty, a little idiosyncratic to my personal taste, but the peak of perfection from her point of view. He only had to raise an eyebrow and any of them would have been his...

And yet he invariably came back to Dasha. Dasha was older than he was, a programmer at some firm, divorced, earning steadily but not too much. She was a long way from model looks — she understood that herself. Her one strong point was that she was one of those people about whom they say "a small dog stays a puppy into old age". And then there were her enormous eyes, almost half her face. With those eyes she looked over the world with the naivety, it seemed, of a five-year-old who had been let outside for the first time in ages. In mute delight she gazed at people, houses, shop windows, mountains, clouds, flowers... And, of course, at Semyon.

She understood perfectly well herself how absurd this misalliance was. She needed neither my caustic remarks nor my furious eye-rolling for that, but I served them up regularly all the same. Personally, Semyon had been infuriating me for a long time. Dasha's obsession with him was even more infuriating. But, as often happens, there are things against which even the gods are powerless, let alone a girl who at that point was merely taking an interest in psychology.

They were sort of apart and sort of together. Back in their home town Dasha would visit him at his salon, where he kept a strict eye on making sure that the style he had created for her was maintained and went on pleasing the eye. Only he could cut Dasha's hair in a way that preserved the image, and the slightest departure from the style was something Dasha noticed and firmly put a stop to. It was she who, with her characteristic meticulousness, planned all their trips — hunting down discounted tickets, booking hotels in advance, drawing up itineraries, even if those itineraries repeated one another year after year. And his solo trips into the bargain. And she also poured her feelings out on paper, wrote stories about him and then sent them to him. And those stories inspired him to create still more beauty.

In their small town he was unattainable and out of reach. But the moment the two of them passed through passport control, he seemed to become a different man. He allowed himself to "switch off" from the attention of the whole town, to stop being everybody's sun, and with relief he plunged into the bottomless ocean of her eyes, her admiration and her adoration. In her world he was an omnipotent, radiant deity and the meaning of all existence.

And it was sex! The real thing, although in essence closer to tantra than to the European understanding of it. It was an exchange of energy and inspiration beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. From the outside it looked as though — what could they possibly have in common? A bright, stylish master of hearts, and beside him a small, admiring, modest but stylish lady. An omnipotent Pygmalion and the Galatea he had brought to life.

And yes, Pygmalion and Galatea, reworked by the great Shaw and brought to life on screen by the now immortal Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, were probably the best illustration of their relationship. He literally created her image, he shaped it, he burst into her orderly world with creative chaos, the chaos of feelings and passions; he was the only one who was allowed to do so. And in return she gave meaning to his creative genius, enriched his life with the warmth and comfort that a star had no time for. She was the only one who dared and who was able to look at the sun without burning her eyes, seeing through its glitter and glare. And she saw what was inaccessible to others. She saw him as he truly was, the real him, and she reflected that beauty back in such a way that beside her he found himself again and again.

Alas, in this material world, ruled by base feelings and hormones, contactless sex will not get you very far. So around the third or fourth day of every journey the magnetism between them reached its peak, the air between them thickened to the limit, letting through the occasional discharge, and finally there was an explosion. Dasha would be thrown a fit of hysterics over utter nonsense. Dasha gasped for air, not knowing how to react, protested in return, went off on an excursion alone, then complained to me — only to make up with Semyon again that same evening and set off together on a new excursion in the morning as if nothing had happened.

According to the compatibility theory we use in our work, they are an ideal match of characters. Each of them has four kinds of partner with whom they can find a common language one way or another, but with each other nothing can touch them. They are unquestionably drawn to one another, and that is the best confirmation of our concept. So what is the trouble, then?

That is exactly how theory differs from practice. And that is exactly why I keep telling clients that we have a formula for relationships, but not a formula for love. He is too "cool" for this kind of misalliance, too immature, if you like. And she is too afraid of losing him. Where the gods are powerless, alas, the neuroses run the show.

So I will go on rolling my eyes tragically if Dasha ever ventures to complain to me about Semyon. So Dasha, about four years ago, put Semyon on the list of forbidden topics between us. And that is exactly why, deep down, I will go on believing in a miracle. I will believe that they will outgrow these silly prejudices about misalliance, that they will decide to travel together through all of life's twists and turns and not only through countries, that they will sit down together on a bench on the embankment under the flowering chestnuts with a view of the sunset, and that he will let himself drown in her eyes in full view of their whole town.