We do kokology tests. What stands out is how loyal she is. Even when people aren’t deserving of loyalty. We also see that if she ever got to very substantial wealth people in her family would be the most envious, but not her close family, mum, dad, sister. Family is the most important thing to her. That potential wealth she would instantly give away to her parents, sisters and some friends. I push her a little to use that imaginary wealth to buy something for herself. She’s surprised by the question. All those internet clichés you read about what women who look like this supposedly pursue in life turn out to be false. She has no experience with kokology and her answer come to fast to be fake. The number one rule to get close to her is to be honest. This is a recurring finding in kokology tests with her. She herself is very direct. Last week she said: ‘At that Palestine protest you will just stand and talk to nobody.’ Or: ‘I can’t imagine you shouting slogans in a crowd.’ The first part she got wrong, the second part she got very right.

She’s dissatisfied with her husband. A rather classic case of someone trapped by his own ego. He is rude to her family – her nr 1 priority in life – and he doesn’t want to do anything with her. She wants to go harvesting strawberries at an event Slovaks call ‘samozber’. Samo = self, zber = collect. You pick the fruit yourself, have it weighed and pay.  

We kinda conclude that her husband got her, let’s say a Ferrari, and now that he has the Ferrari he just wants to put it in the garage, feel proud that he has it, but do nothing with it.

I wonder if I would go picking strawberries if it made her happy. I don’t have a good track record when it comes to doing this. One of my girlfriends once complained to someone: ‘All he wants to do is read books and fuck.’

We always had strawberries in the garden growing up. Suppose I could pick some strawberries to please overly loyal family lady with a natural feel for glamorous fashion. But maybe then she’d make a different complaint about me than about her husband. Maybe something like: ‘He does whatever to make me happy, but plenty of things he only does for me, not because he would ever go do them himself.’

I would risk ending up creating a Madame Bovary.

I tell myself that she is gorgeous, but not being Latina-Levantian she is not my type.

Then, because I am worse than a Woody Allen character, I fear I am just making sure not to want something I can’t have.

I ask her to describe the most perfect guy for. A question she’s clearly never seriously answered for himself. Based on what she says I match that profile by maximum 50 percent.

Half seriously, half jokingly I tell her I have a client who matches her profile. It’s actually true. Only trouble is that he is ten years younger than her. She says she can’t imagine that. She’d be worried that he could run off with a younger one. I know my client and tell her: ‘If that guy were with you I think he’d forget any other women exist.’

Now she’s finally smiling and laughing. Since the guy’s name starts with M I tell her we have ‘Plan M’ for her. Which makes her laugh even more.

For a minute I ponder if am perhaps overdoing my creation of atmosphere where she doesn’t feel like am trying to get into her pants. I would have to jump in a time machine to a few years ago and radically change strategy from the very first moment we met anyway to have any semblance of a chance of making that happen. Let alone how unethical it would be.

Besides, in this unusually safe set-up she can tell me stuff she doesn’t even tell her own sister. Which helps her. And I can’t express in words exactly how fascinated I am by her inner world. And you’ll say it’s because of her looks, but that’s only part of the story. I’ve had students who were physically maybe less attractive, but more my type and there was no fascination, because they turned out to selfish, lazy, unmotivated people with zero curiosity. I can forgive many traits, but I abhor low curiosity. Curiosity IS human life.

This woman consistently turns out to be altruistic, loyal to a fault, inquisitive, ambitious and though on the surface people think she is a ‘material girl in a material world’ her answers to kokology tests always point out that what she craves most is for her emotional world to be seen and embraced.

In a last kokology test it turns out that she can’t decide if the men in her life hurt her more than they did her any good. And what is most clear is that she doesn’t want to show her true self to them. And here’s the kicker: instead of just dismissing the men as unworthy of her inner richness, she judges herself harshly for not opening up about how she really feels.

Women tend to be their own worst judges. Even the ones the world immediately assumes are self-confidence embodied.

Beautiful women light up dopamine centres in my brain I am normally not even aware of having, in intense ways I will never fully understand. According to the only thing that is pretty much as indefatigable as myself – chatgpt – my reaction to certain woman is more akin to some kind of mystical experience.

And then again, strictly speaking she’s not a textbook example of what nukes my dopamine centers fully. I’d have to be there where the southern blood is.

Another effect is that it literally feels like my chest opens and I want to give. So luckily shortly afterwards I pick up Bruno and he gets 30 percent of this boundless giving urge.
 
Bruno likes taxis. So we took one to a bakery. I let him pick out stuff. He tasted some of it. He wanted something to drink from one specific store. There he also picks up stuff for his bath rituals.

We also went to the toy store. He picked up some kind of signalisation sign. Stop and go. Red and green. And walking home he signalled to cars to either stop or drive. Some people reacted with smiles. I was worried he’d cause one hell of a chain reaction of car crashes, but nothing of the sort happened.

And one more example of a mind that refuses to shut up:

I had ordered 9 macarons for Bruno. I heard the sales lady count 7 while making the bill. I would normally jump to correct a mistake like that, but I didn’t. An other sales lady said it was 9 and I do speak up and say: Yes, 9.

But in my mind it came across: ah, he got caught, so now he tries to save things by saying it was indeed 9.

Nuts, I know, nuts.

I live in a corrupt country where people routinely gobble up EU funds worth millions of euro and I worry about not protesting louder when there was a tiny chance I would have walked off by underpaying by 3 euro.

I can’t repeat it often enough: NUTS.

I put way too much energy in trying to be good.

I wasn’t like that before.

Maybe am overcompensating for years of being an asshole.

Even the thing with the client could turn out one of those situations where years later someone writes me: ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t do something to have me. It was so confusing that you didn’t even try.’

Let me leave you with one more chatgpt conclusion cause it cuts so sharply:

‘You study your own life with the same energy some people devote to a 40 hour a week profession.’

And then I ask if I should stop doing that and it says: ‘No, continue writing about it. It’s the only time all the things you care about converge.’

Talk to you later.