"the minute i heard my first love story, i started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was . . ."
coming out of the fairy tale years, i desperately wanted to fall in love. and during my formative years with romantic relationships, i hatched a belief about true love. i believed that true love was like a strike of lightening, and when it struck, whether a relationship was good idea or a bad one, there was no choice about it. true love was that unexplainable occurrence that either happened or didn't, convenient or not, returned or not. although i could learn to love or grow into love, true love was that unexplainable whirlwind that just happened sometimes.
my first love was a good example of the theory. it was that intense and volatile kind-of love that looks and feels so much like hate at times. when i was vulnerable and insecure, he made me feel lovable. during the summer when we were first together, i was entranced, but fall came with a slap in the face. he had realized the male adolescent wisdom of seeking variety, and it was over.
despite the clear signs that this wasn't really in my best interest, the relationship continued on for years into the future. for me, it changed from a sort-of pure puppy love to late night phone calls, secret rendezvous, and utter nastiness if we ever spoke in public. when things were good between us, i was all-consumed and could think of nothing else. when things were bad, i only found comfort in mental images of scratching out his eyeballs with my fingernails. i held on for years in the hope that maybe it would turn out to be what it had seemed to be in the beginning.
that consuming feeling of true love struck next in college; there was a guy who pretty much immediately rocked my world. about a month in, i felt ready to completely let go and jump into the relationship with all i had, but as soon as i made that mental commitment, things shifted. nothing added up with him anymore, and he started to seem like a chameleon or shape-shifter. despite numerous attempts to make it work, eventually the relationship ended in the same way it started, dramatically and quickly.
number three came a couple years later. he was someone i'd known for a while, and it all came down to one moment with a bunch of friends at my parent's pool. as he was leaving, we made eye contact, and at that moment i knew. it was in an instant, and before we had ever even expressed any interest in each other, i knew i was in love. it turned out that the third time was a charm, and a partnership between us was just so natural and easy. marriage followed a few years later, and i never questioned that he was actually the truest destiny for me.
until, i met number four. when i first met four, no one could have convinced me that i would ever be into him. he just wasn’t my type. but, as we got to know each other, it disturbed (and intrigued) me that when we would get into a intense conversation, the sexual energy in the room would become overwhelming. there were parallels and commonalities between us that i'd never experienced with anyone else.
as time passed, it was obvious that the feelings were running in both directions. at some point, i became ready to obey that lightening strike, good idea or bad one.
and right before a leap into the arms of number four, i got a glimpse of the chaos and pain that it would cause. it wasn't just a bad idea. i had built a family with my husband and so much more, and i didn't want to leave it all in ruins, not even for the intensity of desire i had to explore this new true love. so i paused, confused as hell, and i stayed right where i was.
that time of confusion has been a traumatic train wreck that i habitually visit in my mind, hoping to finally understand it all. and now, many years later, i feel like i'm finally getting some clarity.
when my working theory was, "obey the whirlwind of true love, no matter what," that fit really well with what i'd learned from the fairy tales and movies. it was exciting, passionate, and dramatic, but when one of these whirlwinds would fall from the sky, take over my world, and pass by, i was just left with questions, not clarity, and not love.
but now, i see that all four of these experiences of true love, even the one with my beloved husband, were illusions. each experience was like the appearance of water to someone thirsty in the desert; these experiences were the fantasy fulfilled, the dream made real. they were the experiences that most matched my ideas about true love, seeded so long before.
and as i moved closer, in each of these experiences there was that day when the illusion burst. a time came when the gap between the dream and reality revealed itself, and the illusion could no longer be sustained. and each time, i so deeply mourned the loss.
for each of them, i suffered: the fact that he wasn't what i thought he was, or that the timing was so bad, or that he didn't treat me the way i thought he would treat me. and each of these tragic falls into reality was the first itch to begin the next search.
it had all happened so subtly within my marriage that i didn't even see it. there were the fantasies about our relationship born in our first weeks, months, and years together. there were the immense moments of awe that bound us together, and all the expectation that the awe would last, just like that, forever.
and then, there were those moments of fallen grace. those times when he'd sit lazily on the couch of our messy house unwilling to do any of the millions of responsibilities on my mental checklist. or those times when he would drift off and actually close his eyes while i was enthusiastically sharing something so important to me. or those moments when i'd see him turn his head to get a good look at the back of some hot girl passing us on the street.
but i had bought into all the cliches: true love was with a guy that only had eyes for me, the one that was supposed to hang on my every word and be willing to do anything for me. so how then, could it come to this?
and so, over time, there was a resignation. my belief in true love carried on in the shadows of my mind, and it was sure that the real prince charming would come. either my husband would shake off this frog thing that had come over him and be the prince i had thought he was, or else some other guy with a white horse would just have to show up.
and looking back, it's just so clear now how these fantasies about true love have been a hindrance, not a help. love is something so different than that idea that descended upon me in my youth. looking back, i even see how my greatest lovers were so often not the ones who swept me off my feet and took my breath away.
and all these years later, i became so confused in my marriage when the whole drama of true love started playing again, like a familiar record, but with a new man. the signs were uncanny, and the whole story played out as though i'd written it myself.
but although the fantasy was perfectly in tact, the man for me was not the one on the white horse. he was the one willing to wait as i waded through my confusion. he was the real thing, not the fantasy. he didn't meet the fantasy ideals in so many ways. but then, he'd turn around and exceed those ideals in ways that i never could have expected. he made me have to drop the story because he was not going to act out the fairy tale with me.
and his inability to conform to my dream is his great gift to me. now, i see that it's in the full surrender to not knowing how the story will go that i can discover what love truly is. i'm finally available to watch it unfold, to be present and learn from what is actually true, instead of staying stuck in the worn out modus operandi of being wrapped up in love as a storyline with me cast as the leading lady.
the real thing may not work as well on a movie screen, and it may require dropping all the illusions of mental guarantees about how it will end. but still, i realize that what's real is what i want. the love that doesn't start or end, doesn't live or die - that's the One that seems worth obsessing about from here.
". . . lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. they’re in each other all along." -rumi
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