To the Once-Delusional, Now-Disappointed Lovers

A Dedication:

At first, it feels like love is wasted — to love someone and have it thrown back in our faces. Or to serve up our love and get nothing back but crumbs. To the once-delusional, now disillusioned who are left feeling dumped and dumb. Here’s to your unwanted emancipation.

~With Love from the Author

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When Olivia Rodrigo said, “love is embarrassing,” we knew exactly what she meant. When someone posted a meme that said, “I’ll vacuum the beach before I’ll tell Facebook I’m in a relationship again,” we felt that specific pain. Pop culture is filled with examples of how cringeworthy the experience of loving someone else can be. These aren’t the relationship goals of our dreams. They are the relationship fails of our fears.

I was always a curious mix of hopeless romantic and dedicated cynic. I was in love with love stories, but I walked through life with eyes wide open — and an eyebrow raised. I had learned early that love had strings and hidden trapdoors. I didn’t want to be so foolish as to fall.

But love makes fools of us all.

Love might feel useless, but it’s not. I say that even after being disappointed in love. I say that after a divorce and a love affair that ended before I was ready. The love we give is not ever wasted — even if it’s on the wrong-for-us person.

Giving love is a generous, beautiful thing.

As disillusioned as I’ve been in relationships, I know that everyone deserves to be loved and loved well. Even if they didn’t have it in them to love me back, even if I was the wrong-for-them person, I know that extending love outward is what we’re meant to do. The failure is not in loving. Rather, it’s in failing to recognize when someone is not meant for us or when a relationship has run its course. It’s holding on too long and resisting what we already know to be true.

I finally learned that love defies the bounds of relationships. While sometimes love wears out and runs down, rusting when unreturned, fading when neglected, it can also outlast the relationship. It can continue— a still beating heart even after we call time of death on the partnership. It might feel like it’s going nowhere because the object of it is lost, but the feeling isn’t as useless as we fear. It’s a beautiful thing to have love for others, and it doesn’t have to be conditional on being returned.

The world needs more love, not less.

I remind myself of that when disappointed by my long history of broken relationships. I tried, and that is not a failure. I loved, and love is never truly lost. It lives in us. It makes the world better. I decide to forgive myself for every time I loved the wrong-for-me man, for every time I loved them more and loved me less, and for every time that my hopeful heart was broken.

I take that energy of giving love and send it out in the world. I love wildflowers in fields and the luminous light of a summer sunrise. I love the breeze on an over-warm day and the tender bud of a flower not yet in bloom. I love the sound of songbirds trilling and the excited bark of my dog when the mail is delivered. I love silent conversations with grandmothers who are gone and the drunken flight of bumblebees. I fall in love with myself and my life, and if there’s still a silent beating heart in me, I know it is a small part of a beautiful whole.

Love can feel foolish and embarrassing.

It can lift us up in hope and break us down in disappointment. But never is it wasted. That’s the wailing voice of grief that tells us that it is. And what is grief if not love’s lost potential?

We think the point of relationships is whether or not they last. Yet, it seems we’re missing the point entirely. We’re never guaranteed forever. In fact, I would daresay that we’re guaranteed the opposite. Love manages to be both fragile and enduring. It is what fills our hearts and breaks them. And feeling love is never, ever wasted.

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A Final Proclamation:

The true waste would be to walk through the world heavy with disappointment and ripe with resentment, never holding joy in the living or exploring the sweet space of contentment. It would be wasteful and useless to have sweet love offered only to taste the sour bitterness of our fears, that aftertaste of stinging pain and salted tears. The real waste would be refusing to love — in case of love hurting. Or refusing to feel all the feelings we’re given. A waste is not loving — or ever truly living. Here’s to letting love be your inspiration!

~With Love from the Author

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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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