Better to Have Never Loved at All

At the tender age of 17, at 3 in the morning, she awoke in a cold sweat, frantically driving towards her best friend’s house. When she saw her boyfriend’s car in her best friend’s driveway, her heart stopped and she died inside.…and never loved again.

Trust is a funny thing.

No matter how much we want to believe someone is telling us the truth, our heart always knows when it’s being betrayed….always.

Your One True Soulmate:

There comes a time in every relationship when the flame no longer burns with the same intensity.

It naturally fades.

And it becomes clear in our mind and soul that the person who swore they’d love us forever is not only capable of loving someone else but is likely to love someone else….and we have no way of knowing when it’ll happen, except to trust our gut.

When this happens we either go into denial, adjust, have an open relationship or marriage, or die a thousand deaths deep inside and never recover.

Many people don’t analyze or overthink the way I do.

But a lot do.

Many of you accept we’re all essentially wild animals at heart and have desires and plenty of opportunities to act on those desires.

But I digress.

My point is quite simple.

There are two types of people — those who can love, lose that love, and love again……and those who can never get over a lost love and are effectively destroyed by it.

Some try to love again….but never will.

I’ve learned not to compare or expect to ever feel what I felt in the past.

I will never frantically beg a stranger for a quarter so I can slide it into the payphone and pray to Jesus, Moses, and Budda that the object of my heart-palpitating desire will answer the phone and give me a chance to try to charm her into loving me the way I desperately love her.

I will never get on my knees and beg someone to love me again.

I will never find someone nearly two decades my junior to write me love letters so intense if I shared them with you, you’d sob uncontrollably.

What I’m finding is a different kind of passion and desire and, yes, potential love.

Not the type of fairytale, breathless anticipation of a teenager, but the deep, profoundly meaningful love of someone who simply loves being with me.

Someone who knows the days of utter fear and terror and night sweats over whether one of us is cheating or being disloyal is long gone.

Someone who, like me, is weathered but wise.

Someone kind and gentle but strong-willed and determined.

Someone who no longer cares about my waist or receding hairline or the hair growing out of ears and nose (Maybe I can groom myself a little better.)

Someone for whom sex is still magical and special and intimate and profoundly meaningful but isn’t everything.

Someone who knows we only have today and is willing to embark on a journey that strictly consists of a bunch of “today’s” with absolutely no guarantee or promise of anything more.

So, does true love have to be manic, insecure, frantic, jealous, and always on the verge of a psychotic breakdown to be true?

Of course.

To reach the highest of highs…we all know the answer is yes.

Explosively, passionate, love — by definition — is bipolar.

It must consist of frantic, messy, deeply insecure moments followed by indescribably intense physical, psychological, and spiritual euphoria followed by deep, bone-chilling distrust, fear, and angst.

True love is as close to insanity as most of us will ever get.

It has to be something that hurts bad when you lose it, or it wasn’t love, to begin with.

I’m now in a grand experiment to find out whether it has to be so destructive to be real….or whether there is such a thing as more tempered, calm, secure love — a more mature love.

I may end up with something more akin to a ‘friend with benefits’ or an enhanced companion than a Romeo and Juliet explosion.

Maybe my definition of love is all wrong.

Maybe I’m mistaking pure, unadulterated sexual attraction, for love?

Maybe love doesn’t have to turn me into a raving lunatic.

SUMMARY:

I’ll end, where I began: the 17-year-old girl who caught her boyfriend cheating with her best friend did happen. And, indeed, she never trusted a man again after that deep betrayal.

But she wasn’t alone.

It happened to me too….

I was 18, living in a co-ed college dormitory. And there was a girl who told me I was handsome and (when drunk and stoned) said she loved me.

And of course — at 18 — believed I had found my one true soulmate.

Then, I developed that unmistakable pit in my stomach, woke up at 3 am, and quietly approached her dorm room.

I heard her and another boy laughing behind the closed door.

It was the kind of giggle where you knew what was going on without actually seeing anything.

That was the first time I ever heard my heartbeat in my temples and felt that sudden full-body weakness you get when you’re about to faint.

For the next several months (the rest of the school year) I was functional but numb.

What college kid expects a girl who engaged in what can loosely be described as a sexual act with him (one time,) to be loyal — in a coed dorm for cryin’ out loud?

My manic brain did.

But, like a persistent cough or flu, my immune system healed from that “love cancer” and I did indeed fall even deeper in love again….and again…..and again.

Had I not been willing to get back on that bucking love Bronco, I would have never been married or had my daughter, or felt the joy and pain of what I now know was a glimpse of what makes life worth living.

So, is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

Hell yeah, it is!

Manic, sleepless nights, and all….

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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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