If you love someone…
May 23rd, 2009 § 2 Comments
I never knew how stupid love made you until I found someone worth being stupid over.
I’ve had relationships before. I’ve broken hearts and I’ve had my heart broken, but each time I was able to walk away and not look back. I found comfort in knowing they weren’t right for me and that another chance was just ahead. I’ve been told I’m too picky, and admittedly I am. But why is picky a bad thing? Marriage is no longer a necessity for survival. People can live alone, have babies alone, thrive alone. And, when the divorce rate is so tremendously high, shouldn’t that tell us that there are far too many people falling into marriage under clouded judgement? So I reason, there is no need to settle…living a full life doesn’t depend on whether you find someone to spend forever with.
I have let go of some pretty great guys because I wasn’t totally in love with them. I reason, that if I were to settle I would have sacraficed those relationships for nothing. I’ve invested too many tears and work to settle for something less than what I wanted. Giving up all that work, only because I got scared that time was running out for me, seemed counterproductive. Even though I stayed in some relationships much longer than I should have, I always knew in my heart which ones I had no business wasting time with. I stayed in those relationships for many of the same reasons that everyone stays in relationships even when they know they’re not happy. I believed they were my last chance, that noone else would want me or that I already invested so much time in that relationship, I couldn’t bear to have all that hard work go to waste. All of these reasons, are very sad reasons to stay with someone. Luckily, I always came to my senses and rolled the dice again hoping for my lucky number 7.
But then a broken heart, and for the first time in my life, losing someone that I didn’t want to lose, prompted me to look deeper within myself. This forced situation set me on a path of forensic study to determine what went wrong, in hopes that were we to get a second chance, I would be successful the second time around.
I will be the first to admit that the breakup made me go a little crazy. My need for control and worst case scenario thinking sent me into a spiral of emotion that I was only able to tolerate because I threw myself on top of family and friends. I was able to walk away from all previous relationships, but this one I couldn’t. This one was different.
And so, this heartbreak set me on a journey which led me to some very interesting places. After I was able to peel myself off of my couch, I went to a palm reader, a counselor and my friends. I needed to talk to them about how I was feeling and I needed the conversation to fill the silence and quiet obsessing going on in my head. While this openness takes either a huge amount of humility or a fair amount of insanity, this openness taught me some very interesting things. The most important thing I came to realize last week, was that I have little to no working knowledge of the fundamentals on how to make a relationship work. Whenever something got tough or required compromise or acceptance, I left. It has always been easy to leave and to move on but I am lucky to have finally found someone that I didn’t want to move on from. And, now I am even luckier because that someone doesn’t want to move on from me. I still have a great deal to learn about relationships, the most important step is admitting that. I am at a new beginning and am blessed to have someone who wants to go on it with me. And more importantly, someone I want by my side for the journey.
I have been thorugh a similar journey in recent years. I am cheering you on while you travel this path…
Thanks m
it’s nice to know I have people rooting for me.