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I was about 14 years old when I figured out how to bug my family’s home telephone.

Although it was a touchtone phone instead of rotary dial by then, it looked a lot like this one. It was mounted on a wall in a hallway in the middle of the house. I had been tinkering for years with wires, batteries, phone parts and tape recorders. I understood the basics of the technology.

The cable containing four wires ran down the wall and through the floor to an unfinished basement. It was there that I conducted my experiment. I figured out how to trigger the power to a tape recorder when the phone rang. I had spliced the two wires carrying voices into a line-in cable to the recorder.

Every time the phone started ringing, the recorder started — with the record buttons already in position — and it recorded the conversation. I don’t recall how I rigged it to know when a call was over.

For a long time, I’ve told this story with amusement, but it wasn’t until the last few years that I understood what it was all about. The real insight in this story is that I didn’t trust anybody — and I thought nothing of betraying their trust, too.

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I don’t think I made much of an impression on her when we first met. But she made a big impression on me, so I did something I had never done before. I chased her.

We met online. It’s been many years now. She was smart, had beauty-queen looks and seemed to share a lot of my values. It was like spotting a unicorn in the wild, but I felt as though I was way out of my league to pursue this ideal woman.

For a couple of months, we corresponded a bit online. A few of our conversations were deep and intense, but it didn’t seem that important to her. All I knew is that I wanted to get to know her better. I liked what I saw, but I sensed hidden depths that she wasn’t letting me see.

I was pretty sure I would fall in love with this woman if I ever saw her heart.

But she was busy. She was also in demand. I’m sure she was being pursued by other men. I didn’t get to see her heart. Then I didn’t hear from her for awhile. I’ve never been the sort who chased a woman who didn’t seem interested in me, but I couldn’t let this one go.

I set my ego aside and I chased her.

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I can’t possibly tell you why I fell in love with Gail when we were freshmen in college.

That’s not a negative reflection on her. To the contrary, I have only good things to say about her. But I’ve changed so much since I fell in love with her that I can’t put myself into that emotional place. I’m still the same person I was then, but I barely understood myself, much less how two adults should love each other.

I was emotionally and psychologically immature.

Gail was my reflection of the ideal woman at the time. We had gone to high school together. We had spent time in church together after her widowed mother married someone in my church. She was bright, well-spoken, confident, creative, ambitious and attractive. I considered myself very fortunate.

I’ve been thinking lately about what our choice of romantic partners says about us — and I can’t help but think that our partner choices change over the years in ways that reflect who we are becoming and the ways that we allow those people to influence us.

When we move on to other partners, it’s often simply because we are no longer the same people we were when we chose that person — for good or for bad.

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