“‘Love comes from an unexpected corner’, I read in my horoscope. I still laughed about it. But sure enough: in the summer of 2018 I got into a conversation with Rob at the chip shop on the beach of Kijkduin. A real guy with a chain on and a hat on his bald head. Not the type I like, but for some reason we played in line there being German tourists and had a lot of fun. In the end he insisted on taking my fries and at the end of the beach day he walked by again to ask for my number.
That evening he called immediately, not until ten o’clock. He said he was a widower and worked for the police. We chatted for an hour and a half and the next day just like that. I had been single for years and it had been a long time since I had laughed so much with a man. After the first date – he challenged me to climb the Dom in Utrecht – we were together. But take it easy, given his situation with mourning and an adolescent son, but that was just as nice for me. After those years alone, I found it quite difficult to open myself up to someone again.”
“Now we are five years later and we live together. We are well off, but to be honest I don’t always feel well. I feel like I am losing out to Odette, Rob’s deceased wife. That his love for her is greater than for me, and only grows bigger with time Everything about Odette was fantastic, of course that’s what death does to memories.
Comparison is poison, my therapist says, but I can’t escape it. I feel second best. I know from stories that Rob gave Odette a weekend away as a gift for her birthday, a trip that he then planned completely with a surprise concert and everything. I get to pick something up at the perfumery. It’s not about the money, because it’s not that Rob gives me a budget, it’s about the effort he puts in. Or actually don’t.”
His great love
“Odette was his great love, he says that regularly. He married her and had a son. That poor boy was fourteen when he lost his mother, terribly of course. I met him when he was seventeen. We saw each other a lot not, because Ruben mainly went his own way with work and friends. And I only moved in with Rob when Ruben moved to rooms two years ago.”
“I went to live in their family home and maybe that’s why I sometimes feel like a stand-in. Odette’s photos are still on the wall, her wedding dress is still hanging in the attic and I cook with her cookware set. I also understand: those memories are important for Rob and also for Ruben. I only brought a few things of my own. Some books, my plants and a painting my mother made for me. Fortunately, Rob had already bought a new bed after Odette’s death, I would have found too intimate.”
Not a matter of time
“Rob’s sisters and friends also regularly tell about Odette and how nice she was. Then Rob is radiant and supplements the stories with brightened up anecdotes and beautification. I understand that too. He is a good storyteller and loves attention. In at first I thought it was only a matter of time, and that he would eventually tell so blissfully about our adventures.
But where he used to travel all over Europe and America with his wife, he doesn’t get further than the north of Spain with me. And that’s not my fault. I’d love to take a road trip through the music cities of the US, but Rob doesn’t want to be so far away from Ruben for so long. I can really imagine something about that, even though I never had children myself.”
“Rob is a different man to me than he was to Odette. I sometimes find that difficult. I don’t dare call it jealousy, that would be bad of me, but sometimes I still don’t know what my place is. Or Rob too would be with me if Odette were alive. I know the answer to that and that answer makes me sad. Rob often says that he loves me so much, and that he loves me, and I love him too. But I would have loved to have been his one.”
The name Carina is a fictitious name. Her real name is known to the editors.
Wanted: Love Lessons
For the Love Lesson section on RTL News Lifestyle we are looking for beautiful, vulnerable, funny, inspiring and honest love lessons. An insight, a moment of reflection. Preferably with a hand in your own bosom. Did you eventually turn out to be the one with a fear of commitment? Should you never have emigrated for love or did a composite family turn out to be an illusion after all? Journalist Hanneke Mijnster would like to ask you all about it. Telling is allowed anonymously. Mail to: hanneke.mijnster@rtl.nl.
2023-05-17 19:34:30
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