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I’ve been doing a cringe-worthy dance with love ever since the fifth grade when Cathy Fitzpatrick moved into the neighborhood and became the reason for every erratic beat of my nerdy heart.
Of course, back then, I had no idea what love was. All I knew was that whenever I saw her, my heart beat a little faster, I couldn’t remember how to form words, and I miraculously managed to become even more awkward than usual.
I pathetically mooned over that classmate for years, and never once even attempted to tell her how I felt, so it should come as no surprise that nothing ever happened between us.
Thirty years later, I might have figured out how to speak to the opposite sex, but I’m still working on a true understanding of what love is. Not only do I believe that love is something entirely different to every person, but I am also positive that my perception of love is constantly evolving.
The love I felt for my college girlfriend is not a love I would even want today. However, it was exactly what my heart told me I needed back when I was on my own for the first time and trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.
It begs the question: Did I get smarter about love, or did my heart finally catch up with my brain?
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My therapist really likes to ask: “Do you accept the love you think you deserve?”
She poses the question so often that at first, I assumed she earned a commission for each time she worked it into one of our sessions.
While her query got under my skin in the beginning, over the past couple of months, I’ve come to realize that the question cuts right to the heart of why I’m in therapy.
My overactive imagination believes that a seemingly infinite number of things have eluded me in life, but my mind can focus just long enough to discern that love has clearly been my great white whale.
I’ve searched for it for longer than I care to admit, and I even thought I’d found it on a few occasions. Yet that one true love somehow remained bitterly elusive.
I kept pounding my head against the wall and wondering why true love was so hard to find.
What I should have been doing, though, was pondering my therapist’s favorite question.
When I got married, I most certainly did not accept the love I deserved. I settled for the love that was offered and convinced myself that I was the happiest man in the world.
We were not a good match, but we had latched onto each other in college when we were both going through major family issues. As much as I hate to admit it, I was very dependent on my ex-wife, so I was thrilled to lock down ‘til death do us part, the version of love she put on the negotiating table.
It wasn’t a shock that the end of my marriage came long before death interceded.
After my divorce, I was so lonely and broken-hearted that I made foolish and desperate decisions when it came to affairs of the heart. This led to relationships that no hopeless romantic in his right mind would ever accept.
I was not accepting the love I deserved because I no longer thought myself worthy of love.
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I try to spare my significant other the embarrassment of being dragged into these weekly peeks behind the curtain, but a column about love is destined to wind down a path that leads to at least a passing mention of her.
A couple of months ago, I decided to make some major changes. I had been unhappy for so long that I’d simply come to accept it as the way my life had to be. To be perfectly honest, I had no concept of how miserable I’d become and the effect it had on those around me.
I readily admit that change scares me. I’m an introverted creature of very bad habits who puts up walls, keeps people at a distance, and is petrified of the consequences of giving love another chance.
Sure, I’d moan and groan to whatever friend was unlucky enough to be within earshot that I was lonely and wanted to be in a relationship again, but they were empty words. My brain remembered what to say, but my heart had long since forgotten how to give those words any deeper meaning.
When someone so obviously different from anyone I’d ever known wandered into my life, I was in the absolute worst place to even consider the love that I deserved.
As was my modus operandi, I just assumed she would hurt me like all the others. Without even realizing it, I fought the love that was being offered, took it for granted, and scared it away before it even had a chance to change me.
Luckily, the jarring loss of what could have been was enough to awaken me from my self-induced coma of romantic stupidity. Apparently, my heart had a great white whale sighting. True love had presented itself and I surprised myself by deciding to chase after it with reckless abandon.
But because I’d wasted so much time being miserable and ensuring that love could never find me, I was not in a position to be loved, nor should I have been asking anyone to love me in return.
I finally came to terms with the fact that I needed to change drastically, and not because of the love I wanted, but because I needed to be happy and lead a rewarding life.
Luck must have been with me because after I put in a great deal of hard work (which is far from finished mind you), I found the beautiful green Irish eyes of my great white whale smiling at me.
After all these years, my search was over.
Not only was I finally able to accept the love that I thought I deserved, but she also accepted the offer of my oft-broken heart.
Reflecting back upon it now, perhaps I’d never accepted the love I thought I’d deserved because my heart was holding out for the woman who now possesses it.
At last, I’ve found true love.
And I am completely confident that I deserve it.
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Photo: iStock
Read Austin Hodgens’ column every week here on The Good Men Project!
This story has been republished to Medium.
And thank you for sharing this.
What a great piece here! I think most of have to endure a heartbreak and some loss of dignity before we finally start doing as your therapist suggested: accepting the love we think we deserve. I know my journey from marriage to divorce felt like a trip to hell in a snowsuit. But like you, I found real love now, the wisdom to know what that looks like, and the courage to demand it entirely. Good luck to you!
Thanks for the kind words, Rica. I’m glad that you can not only relate, but that you have also found love again. Divorce and breakups can really mess with our hearts, self confidence, and perception of love. Glad to know that you hung in there, too, and found your great white whale!
Happy for you and your love. Love relationships can be so painful and beautiful, awful and wonderful. I have experienced both extremes. As an insecure young woman I gave love in large quantities to individuals that were frankly, not worthy. I also tried to make a marriage work when all logical signs indicated it wouldn’t. I wanted to save us both but in the end I put on the oxygen mask first and jumped out of the plane (best decision ever). I have been with my husband now for 20 years. It is not a perfect relationship (whatever that is)… Read more »
Do you think there is such a thing as a perfect relationship? I’m happy you found love again. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts on this one!