Are you in love in the forever after kind of love? Or is it a deep intense love without it being the "one true love"?
Valentine's Day is coming and I have started pondering about "love"
As some of you may know, I am single and celibate at the moment. By celibate, I am not using it as the synonym of single but rather to mean that I am avoiding and have no interest in men, relationships or sex. I also have no intention of changing that status right now, nor do I know when I might want to.
This does not prevent me from pondering my life and past relationships. There have been way too many relationships with men in my life. I have had enough so far to last two lifetimes, maybe even three, but I was looking for the wrong thing in all the wrong places.
I was looking for proof that I was lovable in men that were only interested in sex. Very bad for self esteem.
Anyway so I have been pondering all my past relationships and have determined that of all of them I have actually probably fallen in love 3 times (a fourth the jury is still out on if it was love or infatuation) Of those three men, I don't think any of them loved me.
The first one was my first real boyfriend. In the beginning maybe he did feel something very strongly for me. I was 11, he was 14. We were the cutest thing. Most called it puppy love and few expected us to continue seeing each other until I was 17, he 20.
For two years, we saw each other almost every day, we did break up once or twice, but it did not last very long. Then, when I was 13, I moved away. We continued being involved through letters, and when I visited in the summers. As with all long distance relationships, it couldn't last and it ended terribly. I met up with him years late, when I was in my 30s, but the magic was gone for good, we had become two very different individuals, worlds apart.
The second one, I was 24, he was just 19. Yeah I know, robbing the cradle and all. Actually, he was the one who pursued me. In the beginning I would have nothing to do with him BECAUSE he was younger. He kept hassling my friends, trying to get them to convince me to give him a chance. He knew I was a single mother. He was willing to become part of her life. After he turned 19, between him and my friends, I decided to give him a shot. I fell for him hard and fast.
The relationship lasted barely more than a month. I broke up with him. The outside pressures were too much for me to handle, for us to handle. His family disapproved of me and were always on his case to break up with me. The people kept telling him that I was cheating on him, they kept telling me that he was cheating on me. His friends were telling him to stop seeing an older woman with a kid, that it was too much responsibility. the people around me were telling me that I was insane to go out with someone so young when I was a mother. Well he might have been able to handle it, he did after all join the army and survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan. (later). I regret to this day not toughing it out. I am very proud of the man he became, I have told his parents this and they thanked me. I lived a few doors down from his parents for 6 years. Eventually I am sure they figured out who I was, even though we never discussed it. His parents got to know me years after I broke up with him and respected the person I was. They probably realized their original fears were for naught.
He went on to marry and have beautiful children. Lucky woman!
The third man, I fell in love without noticing I was falling. He made it so easy for me. It started out that we were "booty call" partners. We worked together and I was complaining that I could not get a guy to help me with my "needs" and he mentioned that he could help me with that. He was not my type at all. He was younger than me, shorter than me, and blond! Considering up till then I had gone for tall dark and handsome, if it had not been for that conversation I totally would not even had considered him. Even when he offered, I did not take him seriously and kind of dared him and myself to do it.
Boy that first time was AWKWARD!
He was so sweet and so shy. Every time I would visit him, he did not make me feel like a means to an end. He was sweet and romantic and considerate. He treated me like a princess in every which way. Our arrangement was to be a secret. It was understood that neither of us would discuss our encounters. I had a friend that had been involved with him and so many times I almost blurted out details about my encounters with him, but that was against the rules. He did not want me to tell her. I found keeping the secret from her so difficult. After years of us seeing each other, he eventually decided to tell people about us, to become more in the open. He was the first to tell our friend, and she took it hard. She took it hard that he had gotten involved with me and took it even harder that I had not told her. It destroyed our friendship. I miss her to this day, yet understand her feelings.
Our involvement lasted about 4 years, at most 5. Ending it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. Part of me still longs for him. For a while, I thought he might have cared for me, even maybe loved me, especially since he was so sweet, treated me so well and at times I thought I heard him say those words... in the height of passion, or when I was asleep and snuggled against him. I had been thinking of possibly ending the relationship if we could not make it official for a while. I was trying to get him to agree (delicately) to become an actual couple. He had seemed to be taking steps towrads it, telling people about us, being seen in public together and so on, but he was not making that final step. The one day I see on facebok that he is in an open relationship. I would find out shortly that he was going out with her, being official with her but the open referred to keeping his unofficial relationship with me. That made me feel so dirty and worthless that I put an end to it once and for all. I sent him an email that I was not interested in being the side dish anymore, I was looking to be the main dish and if that was not going to happen then it was over.
I still miss him. I also miss my second but in a sweet kinda way. My third, his absence still hurts. I tried to replace him, but it didn't work.
So that's it, the story about the men I love(d).
Thanks for reading.
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