Given a chance to explore an old passion, an assistant professor learns the rules and realities of a conference romance
On a beautiful spring day several years ago, the e-mail message came. I should have expected it, but it still knocked me for a loop. It said, in part, “I really think we should just be friends and not have a romance.”
Feeling like old times. We had become reacquainted at an academic conference where it was warm and sunny in the winter, miles and miles from my home. We hadn’t seen each other for about 15 years. I had had a tremendous crush on him back in graduate school, but each of us was committed to someone else at the time. When we left to go to different parts of the country with our respective significant others, I literally cried for hours, and I think he shed a few tears, too. Eventually we lost touch.
So here we were, many years later. A few kids, one marriage apiece, and a couple of job changes later. Oh, and some hair color, contact lenses, fashion sense, and money in the bank. Like many in our generation, we had grown up and spruced up. I recognized Dr. X immediately — the sparkling eyes, the smooth voice.
He asked me to lunch, where I was so excited to see him I could barely eat. We chatted amiably about our lives back home. He was flirtatious and funny, and between my heady memories and the reality of seeing him in the present, it was easy to fall in love all over again.
As lunch ended, he asked me to meet later at one of those conference receptions that seems to recreate dorm life: parties in rooms that are too small for the many people crammed into them, plenty of alcohol, and no parents — or in this case, no spouses or children to observe one’s behavior.
I found Dr. X about 10 p.m., in a crowded suite with little plastic wineglasses sitting everywhere, standing with the room phone in hand. I walked up to touch his arm. “I was just calling your room,” he said. The party was packed. There was a lot of hugging of old acquaintances, and loud laughter.
While others were discussing doctoral candidates and faculty recruiting, I was watching my companion, just amazed to be in the same room. But I was also jet-lagged and exhausted. After an hour or so, I decided it was time for me to go back to my room. As we left the social scene, he put an arm tightly around me. Whatever regular life I had back home seemed a whole lot less important.
We each had a roommate at the hotel, and I had to leave on an early flight. We said our goodbyes with an embrace outside my room. I said, “I really like you!” (What an idiot! I thought later.) Dr. X held my gaze for a moment and said, “We should keep in touch this time.” His lips brushed mine as we said goodnight, and he walked quickly away.
The correspondence. That might have been all there was to our little reunion, except for one thing: e-mail. Nowadays a long-distance relationship is all too easy to promote and prolong.
I wrote first, but he responded promptly. I wrote more, but he kept answering. We flirted with flirting. I did him a small professional favor, and a couple weeks later, a box arrived for me with a beautiful polished mineral inside. “Thanks for your help,” the note said. “It seemed appropriate to send you this specimen that is millions of years old.” Of course, that sealed it.
I checked my e-mail constantly, for nearly a year, till we met again.
A conference affair. David Lodge’s wonderful 1984 novel, Small World, paints a picture of the academic-conference scene in broad strokes that are simultaneously hilarious and poignant. His protagonist, a male English professor named Philip Swallow, watches his fellow academics at conferences all over the world become involved and uninvolved in affairs of the heart, mind, and, of course, corporeal being.
Toward the end, Philip meets the woman he has dreamed of for years, who he actually thought had died. Her name is Joy, and the two engage in a passionate conference-based affair that brings him the kind of sexual fulfillment and happiness (a.k.a. “joy”) that he never thought possible … until — because the book is basically a comedy and a morality tale of sorts — he becomes seriously ill in a foreign country. He begs his wife to fly from England to look after him, thus ending the affair with Joy and returning to his normal life.
In my real-life story, there were several conferences, and, yes, there was some joy. At the first conference following our months of e-mailing, we met at the hotel bar in midafternoon for a drink. Revealing both my nerves and my nerve, I was the first to suggest he should come to my room.
Once we were there, my new paramour delivered a little talk. He said I should know that he wasn’t planning to leave his marriage. Each experience, as he put it, was something separate to be enjoyed, but I shouldn’t assume it would necessarily happen again. As he took my hand in his, he said he worried I might get hurt.
Well, what could I say? It seemed a little late to back out. So, thus cautioned, I took the plunge. At the time, I felt no guilt and no regrets, intoxicated as I was, not from the one glass of wine, but from a sort of daydream come true.
Harsh realities had to intervene soon. Two important rules of the conference affair came to light during those first two days together: No overnights in the same room. And keep public interaction to a minimum.
I’d been fantasizing about romantic getaways in which we could spend a lot of time together, but I soon realized what a good compartmentalizer my partner was. He thought of our affair more as a series of opportunities for a little excitement in an otherwise “conference-as-usual” atmosphere.
Throughout those conferences, over many months, I’m afraid I became more and more like a lovesick teenybopper in the halls at school — scanning the crowd for the object of my crush, observing him from afar, trying to catch his eye. Intellectually I understood the limits of our situation, but emotionally I was a wreck.
It dawned on me that I had strong feelings for a man who was basically interested in casual encounters — on his terms. Back home in between, in the lonely hours with my computer, I sank into obsession. Like Philip Swallow, there were moments I really wanted to leave my marriage and follow my heart. But there was a problem: My love object was married, too, and didn’t want me to follow my heart anywhere within 1,000 miles of his cozy suburban home.
The denouement. So that’s how I ended up with a “just be friends” message on that spring day. I’d gone a bit overboard, I admit. I had mentioned wanting to see him sometime between conferences. I had broken the “no expectations” rule, and Dr. X got nervous.
After the breakup note, instead of just letting him go, I put a lot of store in that word, “friends,” and continued to write and even phone him occasionally. I wanted to define our now platonic friendship as something special. I pictured a kind of Will and Grace relationship in which Will wasn’t gay. I pictured a friendly affection tinged with sexual allure, a soul mate to share funny stories and frustrations about work, someone to whom I could confess my fears, dreams, and negative student evaluations.
But it was hard to achieve that. I was too attached, and Dr. X was understandably wary. I realized that the situation was an unhealthy distraction and that I needed to move on. But it was difficult.
For a long period, self-help books graced my bedside table. The hardest part was seeing my “friend” again at a conference after our breakup. He was nice enough, but we both seemed a little sad and awkward.
In the overall equation, I did get hurt. I was misled, not by Dr. X, but by my own feelings. Over time, however, the sting has faded, along with my obsession.
What does it all mean? We academics flock in droves to conferences in luxury hotels, sometimes in lovely, exotic surroundings. Many of us could attend three, four, or more a year if we were so inclined. And the combination of stress and tedium that is the academic conference may encourage pleasure-seeking that we can’t have at home.
Out of our daily routine and responsibilities, away from the sight or the scrutiny of the youthful students on our campuses, we may feel freer to be ourselves, and possibly to turn back to an earlier, idealized self from the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, possibly a self we never got a chance to try out.
The late Shirley P. Glass, in her 2003 book NOT “Just Friends”, writes, “My research and the research of others point to opportunity as a primary factor in the occurrence of extramarital infidelity. … Clearly extramarital involvement is facilitated by careers that offer greater autonomy and freedom from constraint. … At the high end of opportunity, some professions require out-of-town meetings and conferences. … Finding yourself in a hotel, away from home with plenty to eat and drink and no curfew, makes it easy to advance a collegial relationship to a deeper level.”
Life goes on. The freedoms and passions that are part of academic life can extend to conference friendships that we look forward to renewing each year, or into the emotionally dangerous territory of conference affairs. Poor Philip Swallow and I each had the chance to explore an old passion, and, in the process, we learned a few things about ourselves, and about what a midlife affair can and cannot do for one.
I have taken the affair as a sign to look at my life and work for what’s been missing. Psychotherapy has helped. I’ve been making time to re-engage in some of my interests outside of academe, developing new, supportive friendships, and trying to focus on the work projects I find most rewarding.
At the inevitable out-of-town conferences, I now try to plan my social time carefully, so I don’t end up feeling adrift in strange hotels. And, fortunately, I’m still married and have recommitted to my kindhearted and generous spouse.
I don’t get the stomach butterflies of a teenager anymore. Once in a while, I think of my former lover for a few extra moments and lapse into wishing things could be different. Like a recovering alcoholic, I sometimes miss the stuff.
Laura Mercer is the pseudonym of an assistant professor at a research university.