Friday, March 29, 2024 14:10

Remaining Single: Heartfelt Thanks for Heartbreak? Definitely!

This year for Valentine’s Day, my gift was heartbreak.  And I have so much gratitude for this experience, believe it or not.  Crazy?  Maybe, but read on and perhaps you’ll understand as I have come to, because life is for lessons and this has taught me so much.

My mother always used to say you know you’re deeply in love or have found “the one” when you know it’s a person you have to be with because you can’t imagine life without him.  Until recently, I never believed her.  Now I know it’s because I hadn’t experienced that kind of love for myself yet.  And now that I have, I so get what she was talking about, because the man I fell in love with was everything I could ever have wanted.  In the movie “Fools Rush In” with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek, Matthew Perry says at one point “You’re everything I never knew I always wanted.”  I think this speaks to the same thing too.  Sometimes we don’t see it coming and I certainly didn’t with this person.  But there he was.

The details of the experience aren’t important.  What’s more important is how it made me feel – about myself, about romance, about love, about trust, and about being open to what my heart was saying.  Sadly, the romance came to an abrupt end on Valentine’s Day.  I don’t know what happened but I know it’s not going to continue.  Again, the details of why it ended aren’t important.  What is important is the way my heart felt, for probably the first time.  Was this man too good to be true?  Possibly.  But I have always said and continue to believe that settling isn’t going to work for me.  Are there compromises to be made with every man I encounter? Absolutely.  But not in terms of compromising myself or my standards.  Do I have impossible standards?  I don’t think so.  I’ve been through enough romances to know what I don’t want, which is equally valuable.

What mattered to me this time was that two things happened for the first time ever.  I was with someone whom I could talk to about anything and everything.  He was genuinely interested in getting to know who I am and what I am about.  He wanted to know my passions, my feelings, my flaws, my strengths and talents, every wound, every sadness, every past experience that makes me unique.  He heard it all, and he listened without judging and he made comments about it all.  That was a miracle and I have never had that before in a romantic encounter.  Of course I have friends who listen to me and they know my life and my truth and my heart and my feelings, and that’s all wonderful.  I am grateful to have those friendships and value them highly.  But there is something about having that same connection with a man where there is romantic potential – a man who takes the time to admire me, to care about who I am.  That is something I know I ‘ve been waiting for and hoping for always.

And because of that connection, the second miracle that came from knowing this man was for the first time in my life, the lonely feelings that are always with me were gone.  For the time I knew this man, I didn’t feel lonely at all.  And that’s definitely a first.  I have felt lonely my entire life.  There is a well of loneliness inside me that runs so deep I’m not sure where the bottom is or if there is a bottom to it.  I have felt lonely in every relationship of my life, in most friendships, and in most situations.  I can work through it, I can understand it and accept it, and I know it’s part of who I am.  At the very deepest core of me, there is loneliness.  But for the time of knowing this man, and for the first time, that loneliness was absent, gone.  And for that I will always be grateful.

I have cried many tears about this experience, and I have never cried tears like this.  I thought I had heartbreak before but this was newer and deeper than anything else I’ve ever felt.  And I don’t mind it because at least I know now what to shoot for.  I may never find it again.  It may never come to me again.  I will always be grateful that I was given the gift of this encounter, and I’m even grateful for the pain I felt over its exit from my life.  A dear friend of mine says that we all have ‘time people’ in and out of our lives.  The concept is that a person comes into a life for a certain length of time.  For me, this man was a ‘time person’ and I learned so much about myself that was helpful.  I learned I am not immune to heartbreak.  I learned I am not immune to love.  I learned I have so much to give to someone I love. I learned to keep hoping that somewhere in the world there may someday be a man who will be as this man was, only maybe next time he’ll stay in my life for longer.  Maybe forever.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  I think so.

Comments are closed.