Learning That the Love of My Life Was Just a Lesson on Life

I was never the kind of person to fall in love easily. I was far too guarded for that. The three little words that seemed so simple for everyone else to say weren’t simple for me at all. I could tell my family I loved them. I told my friends all the time. Yet, saying those words to a boyfriend was something I was either unable or unwilling to do. I took them seriously enough that I didn’t just give those words away.

It surprised no one more than me when I did fall in love quickly.

Despite my walls and my weird insistence on keeping myself at a distance, I fell. I let myself trust and believe, and for the first time in my life, I felt a strange certainty about a relationship. It made me brave. It gave me the courage to do all the things I’d tried and failed to do before — to speak up for my needs, to talk through problems without seeing my partner as the problem, and to build a stronger, deeper connection than I ever had before.

It’s no wonder I thought I had found the love of my life. But I probably shouldn’t be surprised that what I actually found was just another lesson on life instead. After all those years of taking a practical approach to relationships, I had allowed myself to be wildly impractical. I had let myself love despite distance and differences. I let go of fear. I finally understood why some people leap without looking.

I knew there was a risk of loss.

I’ve always known that. I took the risk anyway. When everything fell apart, there was a part of me that wanted to say that it was inevitable — that everything ends and nothing good ever stays. That part of me wanted to shut down and rebuild the walls that the relationship had leveled. I wanted to go back to being a person who didn’t fall in love easily, a person who would be a little more invulnerable to hurt.

But despite having that desire, I knew it wasn’t in my best interest. I was committed to getting better, not bitter. I knew that I had to let go and trust that the love of my life wasn’t ever going to be a person who would willingly leave it. I had to believe that there were other loves out there for me. I didn’t resurrect those walls to hide behind. Instead, I kept my heart open even though it was aching.

I looked for the lessons.

The lessons of a broken heart can be a silver lining, but even when we don’t look at them that way, it’s important we learn whatever we can so that we don’t repeat the patterns and end up in the same hurting places. I needed the lessons. I needed a reason to make sense of why I had loved only to lose.

At first, I found all the usual things. I should have loved myself better. I should have advocated more for myself. I should have left when the relationship was no longer working.

That’s just the surface level lessons. I went deeper. I dissected the relationship, and if you’re thinking I used it to numb the pain, that’s likely an accurate assumption. I let my analytical side lead, but I didn’t want to just skim the surface and move on. I read about attachment styles and trauma responses. I saw all the ways that unhealed trauma had been a barrier to intimacy.

I dove deeper still. I had learned to love and trust completely. Could I love and trust enough to let go? I kept asking myself why I wasn’t healing, why this wound kept opening. I looked at my reasons for holding on and the many more reasons I should have been letting go. I went to war with myself — and then had to find peace. I accepted that healing wasn’t going to happen on my personal timeline. I let the feelings come, and they kept coming.

I started seeing how the relationship made me better — ways I wouldn’t have anticipated beforehand. I could trace the trajectory of my growth and see that I left the relationship far better than I had entered it, even if my broken heart insisted that couldn’t possibly be true. Yes, I had new scars, but I also had new skills to heal from them.

I stopped feeling like a fool and started feeling grateful instead — although moments of foolishness still find me. I stopped telling myself that I had lost the love of my life. Surely, a love story like that would end better than this. Rather than losing the love of my life, I reminded myself that I had just completed an immersive master class on love and loss.

Despite my misplaced confidence in the relationship, I do know some things to be true:

I am capable of loving well and nurturing a relationship.
Trauma healing is necessary for healthier relationships.
Compatibility and commitment matter more in the long-term than chemistry.
I am capable of loving well and still leaving if the relationship isn’t healthy for me.
Love is a renewable resource. There’s still plenty of time to find the love (or loves) of my life.

I found that I am capable of falling in love. With the right person in a safe relationship, I can be vulnerable. I can be myself. I can even trust that I’ll be loved for who I am. If someone doesn’t love me for me, I know that I can move forward and not take that personally.

I have loved fully and without regret.

I wanted that person to be the love of my life. I could see it. The future was a vision I was walking toward with both eyes open and a smile on my lips. So, when it ended, I wasn’t sure what was ahead or how I would go on. I had no idea how I would be able to trust in love again when the one I was so sure about had failed. I know only that love is worthwhile, and refusing to love would not be learning my lesson.

Some relationships might feel right to us — and still be wrong for the other person. Or maybe the timing was just off. It’s usually not personal although it feels deeply personal indeed.

For a long time, I thought I had found the love of my life.

I had a million reasons for thinking and feeling this way. But the only thing that matters is that he didn’t feel the same way. I found lessons where I had looked for love.

It was a hard lesson learned, but it was an important one, too. It doesn’t make me less worthy of being loved because this one person didn’t love me. It doesn’t make him less worthy of loving because he didn’t feel that way for me. It only means that some relationships feel like magic but just don’t work out over time. The spell wears off. The magic, left unnurtured, leaves.

Those three little words are magic.

Maybe that’s why I was once so reluctant to let them pass my lips. I knew what it could, and likely would, invoke. I knew the enchantment wouldn’t easily be broken.

I said, “I love you,” and I meant it. Then, I stopped saying the words, but I still felt them pressing against my closed lips. I wouldn’t say what he didn’t want to hear, but it didn’t change how I felt. How I sometimes still feel.

That’s the lesson. We can love, and we can lose. The love doesn’t just go when we want it to. It doesn’t leave when it’s asked. It often outstays its welcome and reminds us of what we are capable of when we let love in — and of how resilient we are when we finally let love go.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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