Lessons from My Therapist: If You Give Up on Love, Love Will Give Up on You

I cringe at the thought of telling you this after five years of difficult relationships and heartbreak and undeserved crap I had to endure from very undeserving people (as I’m sure you have as well) but my therapist reminded me of one fundamental lesson: if you give up on love, love will give up on you.

We watch so many TED talks, we read books, meditate or do sports, yoga or even something creative to get out of our own heads and to have a winning mindset. Some of us post inspiring quotes, others of us are so sick and tired of reading them. Bottom line is, with more or less consistency we train our brains to be successful in all those professional or financial goals we set for ourselves. When it comes to love…that’s a whole other ball game.

Recently, after much thought on the matter, I decided I would not involve my heart in the choice of a life partner. I decided that my heart would come in later, after my mind had carefully selected a semi-stable, strong, confident man. I experimented and had fun, I was kind and I was also kind of a bitch to those who came into my life since more or less the beginning of summer, however I decided that I would no longer dive off a cliff, I am done with head first diving practices.

My new approach seemed much more feasible: no more walking on rocky roads and climbing mountains to check if there is life on the other side of the cliff. I was ready to hop on a nice helicopter to assess whether the next few years of this road would be viable. A view from the top.

But can we actually do this in real life?

I headed into summer vacation expecting nothing. In 2020 I had ended a very difficult relationship with a man whom I had loved with all my heart and who had loved me immensely. The problem was not our feeling towards each other so we had been trying to separate for years and when we would get to the negotiation stage of grief no one was there to negotiate against going back to each other. Now imagine, I was finally out of this beautiful but toxic relationship when my dear friends introduced me to a guy who could be the right fit.

Instead of throwing myself all in, initially I was utterly uninterested and ended up spending the ‘red zone’ of Covid lockdown with him almost every single day as bff’s. We discover we are both TCK (Third Culture Kids who grew up travelling since a young age — but that’s another story) and that we both share a vision of life that entails travelling and fulfilling a purpose that involves making life better for people around us. He had a goal bigger than making money or living a good life, he was creating an app integrated with AI to help paediatricians decrease the number of possible mistakes when assessing cases. Wow, right?

As the wine filled evenings rolled along I truly began to believe this was the right person for me. My heart, completely detached from my brain, didn’t realise he we wasn’t ready for commitment, that in fact he was positively scared of commitment and that he was saying things and acting the opposite way the entire time. I didn’t see the signals. I believed.

In the middle of this web of romance, when I thought this guy was not interested, I met another wonderful guy. He was so sweet, so present, so normal. Too normal for me. He wasn’t exceptional but he had a depth of thought and of awareness of who he was and he was so sweet and patient and caring with me that I decided to put aside any reservations and judgment I had about him not really having done anything with his life by age 34 and I gave him a shot. After six perfect weeks, completely out of the blue, he said he loved being with me but when we would leave each other’s flats to start the day, he ‘just couldn’t breathe’.

Turns out there is such a thing as ‘avoidants’.

For those who don’t know what the term ‘avoidant’ means, it means that when the person is a child they learn that if they need anything, they must rely on themselves and no one else. As adults, they learn to replicate this behaviour in their relationships: if they rely on someone, they risk getting hurt, therefore when they feel like things are going too well and they like you too much they completely shut down and push you away so that they can regain control. Basically, avoidants are those who make you feel like you have imagined it all. It was all in your head. Does it sound familiar? Their switch is so decisive that their brain basically obliterates the mere existence of you.

So here I was, with one guy seemingly not interested and the other who just can’t do it. The first guy, the one I thought was aligned to me, finally decides to step up. He admits he’s liked me all along. We shared romantic night out, romantic illegal (post quarantine curfew at the Duomo) midnight kisses, a couple of days later he comes over and just when I think it’s a done deal: the end.

He’s not ready for a relationship, he wants to sleep with me but also with everyone else. In his words ‘I don’t know if I am sitting in front of my best friend or my future wife.’

After feeling my heart shatter once again, I decided it was time for this loving organ to fly off to a resort in Bali and chill while my brain, who obviously just doesn’t work when my heart is around, to do its fucking job.

Here comes the beginning of summer.

I stopped believing in love so much that I came to a rational understanding of the fact that I could be happy just about with anyone. It didn’t really matter who it was, that happiness was in the choice.

I decided I would choose a viable partner based on whether they matched my lifestyle, my ambition, whether they shared my international life vision.

This is where I began dating again with no heart. I went on a beautiful vacation with an ex (we now know this is always a bad idea) and I had an amazing time. I thought, I was born to be this guy’s wife. He is smart, tall, well educated, cultured, fun, crazy, amazing in bed. As my heart wasn’t around, I invested zero feelings in this. I lived every day like an outsider looking in. Great guy, medium to shitty person. I saw and didn’t care. Rationally, it worked.

After this, I dated a lovely guy with an anger management problem that thankfully did not reflect on me. Good family, intelligent, a past in the army so very structured, pragmatically a great choice. Physical attraction quite low but not tragic as we barely kissed.

Then I met this wonderful guy, actually wonderful. Values in place, friend of close friends, kind and messed it all up within 12 hours. I was so ready for another avoidant narcissist that I didn’t even consider the possibility of us going anywhere and I acted like a psychopathic cold hearted bitch. I rationalised this only afterwards and my therapist reminded me one big life lesson: if you don’t believe in love, love won’t believe in you.

I want to tell you one thing. Through all of this mixture of painful and heartless dating, I was looking for all the wrong things. On one hand I was looking for ever lasting ‘can’t breathe if you’re not there’ emotions, on the other I was looking for a viable husband.

When I least expected it I downloaded an app (the most abhorrent tool to find love in my opinion) and matched with a very very good looking guy while I was in Sicily over the summer. We had nothing in common and he was on the opposite side of Italy from where I was by the time we started speaking. We began talking for no good reason and he was going through a tough personal time. I listened. Maybe my heart was watching remotely from Bali as if it were a Netflix episode of Love is Blind.

This guy was different. There was no pressure to meet. He was not scared of dreaming. My mind was saying ‘dreaming is a lie, do not fall for it, keep your eyes open’.

He was there with his full heart. He was sharing all the shades of his emotions. It could be because he had just suffered a major loss, or maybe the timing was right for him to open up. Bottom line is, I felt like I was dipping my toes in cold water and he was kindly waiting on the shore with a warm towel should I decide to finally jump.

Life has a way of playing tricks on you at times, it put me in a very uncomfortable position this summer, to the point where I had to leave mid-vacation to escape my rude hosts. And he was there to catch me. He didn’t hesitate: ‘It’s a sign, come over.’

At my most cynical time in life, where I was struggling to reconnect to who I was, with a life to redesign which had drastically changed over the previous year, with a move back to my home country which was unplanned and frankly unwanted, I found myself again. I found myself in the freedom he gave me, in those three days alone but with him in a town I had never seen, in 42 degrees heat, in long rides on back of his scooter overlooking sunsets in Venice.

I found myself in the simplicity of his gestures, in his picking me up from my walk alone because he knew it would be too hot for me to get back on foot, in him taking two days off work at the worst possible time for him just to be with this stranger, me. I found myself in silence and in the words of Jack Savoretti’s ‘Breaking the rules’: ‘Nobody here can tell me what to do’.

He gave me the gift of freedom and of safety, of aloneness and of warmth. There was no pressure to impress, no pressure to be anything but who I was in that very exact moment. Out of shape, upside down, in need of space but also in need not to be alone.

He knew my soul. He saw me and understood. To this day he reads my emotions before I do.

He gave me a gift, I came in separate pieces, I left with them connected once again. I left with the knowledge that should they become once again disconnected he can manage communicating with each piece with care and kindness without ever making me feel like there is something wrong with me.

There is no sense of guilt, there is no judgment, there is not anger.

He saw me as the person I was before the sadness, the disappointments, the traumas, the pain. He saw a something beautiful that I didn’t even believe existed in me anymore.

I’m not sure if he knows the true meaning of the gift he has given me. Life has not been kind to us being together, seeing each other again has been made almost impossible, but in a world full of pressures, he allows me to breathe.

In my previous therapy sessions I discovered so many truths about myself, but most of all, as I talked about what I was looking for in a partner, my therapist said: ‘for someone who is so deep and caring and kind, I am surprised that your partners values no longer appear on your priorities list’.

It is true. I began thinking all I needed was someone who would be a ‘proper’ life partner. But then I thought about it again and realised that through my new cynical glasses I was wearing for protection the only person who made it through the last few months, through all my friends ‘cleansing’ and exes ‘final cuts’, was this man, a man whose life seemingly doesn’t fit with mine at all. The only person who didn’t feel the need to push harder, to ask something of me except for me being exactly who I was at that specific moment.

I see him with clarity. I see him even through the tears of knowing I only have a chance to see him for 12 hours on Monday from now till Christmas if I want to. And seeing him is such a hustle it will mean me closer to burnout. I see him protecting me from this. I see him protecting my freedom even from myself, and in this freedom he has created I see my heart able to be transparent, real and holding hands with his.

Life may or may not give us a chance to live this freedom we share today, but I know that whatever happens next, I will never forget the feeling of his heart holding mine.

I haven’t felt so transparent, so true to who I am with someone, maybe ever. In his hands, I’m lighter than in my own. I’m freer than on my own.