Love is a Four-Letter Word
This is the third time I’ve tried to write about this. To say it’s been challenging to write about this, to find the right words, would be putting it mildly. If I had to put it into words why that is—I would say if I have a hard time talking about love (which I do), I certainly don’t find it any easier writing about it.
I suppose I should start at the beginning, and why this four-letter word is so hard for me. It’s funny, actually, in trying to write about this—twice now—and having had so much time to reflect on it, how my views on love started long before my marriage to my ex.
Let’s start at the beginning
I was never one of the “cool kids” and, as such, I never really felt like I fit in when I got to high school. I look back now and see a young girl with all the confidence, but with such low self-esteem. It always seemed that the boy that I liked would inevitably like someone else. I was seemingly cursed with that and with an equal serious view on dating. As such, my first few relationships were incredibly brief, naïve, and filled with lots of intense emotions (on my part), until something would inevitably go wrong. I look back now and see all the tell-tale signs of a young girl who was in love with the idea of falling and being in love, but who had absolutely no idea what to look for and what being in love would actually look like.
Fast forward to meeting my ex. I was so unused to meeting someone and having my feelings reciprocated. The year was 2000, and I was all of sixteen years old (yes, still incredibly young and still incredibly naïve). We didn’t date at first, we were actually friends first, but I remember believing our ability to talk for hours about anything and everything equated to compatibility; and, in my mind, our being soul mates. The fact that we were friends first lent itself to an amazing emotional connection, but it doesn’t mean we were meant to be together, in hindsight. Once we started dating, there were definitely some warning sings, but we were both young, in love, and both incredibly stubborn. We faced opposition to us dating early on from his family and I think part of the reason we continued on is because we truly did love each other, but also to prove to them, and to others, that we really were supposed to be together. Sadly our stubbornness, and the fact that we really did love each other, blinded us to all the red flags we saw (and ignored) in the course of our dating relationship. These issues were only magnified in our subsequent engagement, and even more pronounced and intense in our marriage. We were so incredibly young when we got married (I was 19, almost 20, and he was 21); we really did try to make it work, but there were so many bad habits and hurts that we carried into our marriage with us. We simply didn’t have the knowledge or tools that we needed to appropriately navigate all of that. All of that, however, was just a precursor, but it’s still relevant to understanding why love is such a hard word for me.
Why love is a four-letter word
The moment, though, that love became a four-letter word for me was when my ex left me. For better or for worse, as hard as marriage had been, I had loved this man and was committed to him. We had been married for eleven years, together for fourteen; I had known him for almost half my life. I think, if you ask most married couples, or couples in long-term committed relationships, you’ll find that most will agree that love changes over time. What might have started out as fireworks, butterflies, and all the incredible emotions that come with all the firsts in a relationship, are eventually replaced with something else over time. Not to say that you can’t rekindle that passion, but, for many, those first feelings of love dull over time. You might find a contentment and understanding with your partner instead. For me, with the dulling of those initial feelings, love, for me, had to be redefined. Without the feelings anymore, love for my husband was defined as a choice, and one that I continually chose to make every single day, even on the days I wasn’t feeling it (well, maybe especially on those days). I continued to choose him, because I believed in the vows I had made, even as young as we had both been when we made them.
But all of that, everything I believed about love and marriage, was gone in the span of a thirty minute phone call. Because he had decided to stop choosing me. And, just like that, my heart was broken. So much hurt, so much anger, but I was also left with the inconvenient residual feelings for a man I had loved and had chosen, and who no longer wanted any of it. I am incredibly grateful, even now, for the select few close friends and family who showed up and who were truly there for me in those first few weeks following our split. I was so incredibly lost, but I was able to find a lifeline through these people. To each of them, I can’t say thank you enough. They got me through the hardest time of my life.
And now
Fast forward three…no, three and a half years now wow , and life certainly looks different. So much has happened in that time; it’s hard to even know where to start. I will say this: I never saw myself dating, at least not at first. I was so angry, so disillusioned. It took me by complete surprise when I started to experience those first exciting feelings of talking to someone for the first time, and making plans to see them. This happened while on a trip to Alaska, of all places, as a result of some amazing friends inviting me to join them on their trip there in those first few weeks following my split. While I wasn’t destined for a relationship with this person, it did awaken a part of my heart I was very surprised to feel again. It opened the door for me to have feelings again, and to dating, which, after not having experienced either in 14 years, came as quite a shock.
I will admit that dating in those first few months was both incredibly fun and exciting, but it was also, equally, quite the emotional roller coaster. I wasn’t prepared for it, at all. As I’ve said before, I wanted more than anything to get back to “being me” again, and I didn’t want to be treated any differently in dating either, even though I really wasn’t ready, at least not yet. What it really brought me was a whole load of heart-ache early on. I ended up falling hard for one of the first guys I met. A guy I found who could sleep with me, but who couldn’t be honest with me. I’ll never forget how much it hurt. After stringing me along for two months, all the while telling me that he wasn’t ready to date, only to tell me, after all that time, that he was ready to date someone, just not me.
They say the first person you fall for after your divorce is almost harder to get over, and I can say for a fact that this was true for me. It’s not really fair to compare the two kinds of hurt, but I will say there is a special kind of vulnerability when you open yourself up to someone for the first time after your divorce; to open yourself up to the potential for a relationship, for love, and to have it casually tossed aside—it hurts like hell.
Over the past three years of dating I would say that I have had my fair share of hard lessons that I needed to learn. Having hardly any dating experience prior to my ex, and zero experience as an adult, I definitely felt like a fish out of water. I will say that I have few regrets, at the end of the day. I have met some of the most amazing people in my dating experience, even dating using the apps, which I did at first. I have learned some invaluable lessons along the way, even if I had to learn them the hard way at the time.
I think the hardest thing for me, in dating these past three years, has been the two men that I have fallen for since my ex. Both are so incredibly different, and have had such different impacts in my life (for better or for worse); but at the end of the day, both couldn’t reciprocate the feelings I had for them. Each had a different way of handling those feelings (and I hate that I’m even lumping them into the same sentence, because they are so incredibly different); but, at the end of the day, both men were selfish, and both ended up hurting me, time and time again. At one point, with both men, my heart had to say “Enough.” I know that it wasn’t meant to be, in hindsight, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real for me. I fell in love with both of these men, for very different reasons—but I did fall in love. And as much as it hurt, I choose to see that as a success. I never thought I would ever feel that way about another human being, not after my heart was broken. But I did. And I know now that I can.
Even now, I still struggle with writing this post. I often times can’t write a post continuously from beginning to end, so some time has passed since I began writing this, for a third time. Most recently, I had begun to hope that I could be opening my heart again for someone who came back into my life recently. Ultimately that didn’t happen. The heart was ready, but the timing was still wrong. My heart is sad, because I had hoped that, maybe, this Christmas would be different. That, quite possibly, I could even be in a relationship. But that’s not what life had in store for me this year. Even though it didn’t happen, I am so incredibly proud of me. I put my heart on my sleeve, I said exactly how I felt, and I asked for what I know, in my heart, I wanted. Ultimately, he just isn’t in the place to be in a relationship. As disappointed as I was, I am proud that I tried, and that, at the end of the day, even though it didn’t end the way I was hoping it would, I am not crushed by it. My life isn’t over. I am completely fine, just me. I’m so incredibly proud of all the work that I have done that has gotten me to this place. A place where I would like to have a relationship, I want that...but I don’t need that to be whole.
Somehow, in loving me, I found that I could love again. I hope that someday, when the timing is right, I will meet someone who is ready, and who’s heart is open to receive this love; but, until then, I am happy and content knowing that I have found everything I need, right here.
I recently started reading a new book called “Killing It: An Education” by Camas Davis. It is such an incredibly well written book, but also a book that I find has so many parallels to my own life, as the author and I share so many similar life details: we both grew up in small rural towns in Oregon less than an hour from each other, we both faced huge life upheavals after ten year relationships, both sought to rediscover ourselves afterwards, and both traveled to France as part of that journey of self-discovery. (Spoiler: I’m going to France in March!) The reason I mention her book is a line that she wrote towards the beginning, when her relatively new boyfriend back in the states asks her if she’s having an affair with someone early on in her stay in Gascony, France. She thinks to herself, “Yes. I’m having an affair with myself.” I loved this line so much because it is exactly how I am feeling in this season of my life.
While I had hoped for, and wanted something more to develop with some of the men I have recently talked to, the truth is that I have had a three-and-a-half year love affair with myself in the making. I truly feel that love of and for myself to have blossomed even more this Christmas. I say that because I consciously chose to spend this Christmas just me this year, and I filled it with all of the things I love most. I hesitate to say I spent it “alone,” even though many people would define it as such, because, the fact is that I was far from it. From the moment I woke up, to the moment I fell asleep, I was constantly reminded of just how not alone I was. I felt so incredibly loved all day; all the phone calls, all the texts, then the dinner I made for myself, followed by the presents I bought and wrapped for myself. I truly believe that I finally know what it is to love yourself, and I am not at all ashamed to say that I do. I am having a love affair with myself, and it has made me the strongest, happiest version of myself I have ever known. Strong enough to face a Christmas “alone.” No family, no boyfriend...just me. And it was an incredibly empowering experience.
While I may have started this as a negative post, what with love being a “four-letter word” and all, somehow I have come to the place where I find myself now—where love is not quite as hard to talk about, and not awful. Somehow, in loving me, I found that I could love again. I hope that someday, when the timing is right, I will meet someone who is ready, and who’s heart is open to receive this love; but, until then, I am happy and content knowing that I have found everything I need, right here.
Here’s to that. Here’s to loving yourself, believing in yourself, and finding the strongest version of you in the process. Here’s to still believing in love, even when the ones we hope for more with disappoint us. Here’s to not letting it make us jaded, either. And, above all else, here’s to chasing our dreams in life, even when it doesn’t look the way we thought it would. Even if that means alone. Here’s to a lifelong love affair...with ourselves.
Love always,
Sabrina Michele