A year later we went for the drink which would be our last alone. On the pavement outside a Soho bar afterwards, I saw that somewhere in the night air between us was a decision that wasn’t really about the person standing in front of me at all. It was between immaturity and growing up, between fantasy and reality. Did I want to keep avoiding intimacy and lean back into the safety of a nostalgic crush that didn’t require me to do anything differently? No. I wanted to form real relationships that existed in the real world. To do so would require courage and self-understanding, maybe a little loneliness, and a lot of responsibility. Part of that responsibility meant not calling Ben for attention whenever I felt alone. It meant understanding the role I was playing in idealizing men instead of really seeing them, and finding the inward treasure I had lost in the process. It meant, as bell hooks wrote in All About Love, wanting to know ‘the meaning of love beyond the realm of fantasy – beyond what we imagine can happen’. I still believed the act of showing yourself fully to a new person was a risk, but somewhere inside me a fresh knowledge was unfolding: that the risk of not doing so – of never being seen, of never expressing needs, of never giving and accepting real love – was far greater. After years of feeling passive in love, I understood then that we do have a choice, even if it’s difficult to see. Mine was this: to stay in the fantasies inside my head, or to climb out and live.