By: Kelsey Hau
Yesterday I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. As we did our quick five-minute catch-up, she asked me how my ex was doing. After I did my well rehearsed polite response, “Actually we aren’t together anymore, so I am not entirely sure,” she gave me the immediate look of sadness and sympathy that I always get. I’m well used to that look, I guess that’s what happens when the man you thought you were going to marry breaks up with you, but after giving me “the look,” she told me that she knows I’ll find someone new and I will love him just as much, if not more. Her words, meant to make me feel better about being single, really got me thinking.
I hope she is wrong. I hope I never find someone I love as much as him.
I don’t say that because I am a cynic, and I don’t say that because I hope we get back together. I say that simply because the love I shared with him was too much for me. It was raw, it was passionate, it was all-encompassing, it was emotional, it was everything. He was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about at night. I felt incomplete when I wasn’t around him, and when he was near it was like everything was right in the world again. He was my other half, and what I considered the best part of myself. He made me crazy and emotional. It was like our entire time together was a roller coaster of missing him, loving him, hating him, and needing him.
And I pray to God I never ever feel that way again.
I hope my ex was the love of my life because I never want to feel that kind of love again. I had it for three years. It changed my life and it is something that I will cherish for the rest of forever. I found that kind of love young and I loved every minute of being in it. Even when we were fighting and I hated him, I loved it. But I never want to feel it again. That kind of pain and hurt mixed in with such passionate love was too much for me. It was too much for my heart to handle and when he decided to leave me, I didn’t understand how the world would keep turning.
But it did keep turning, and one day the ache in my chest stopped hurting and all the broken little pieces of my heart and soul seemed to be put back together. That’s when I realized I don’t need that kind of love or that kind of life. It’s not that I don’t want to fall in love again. I can’t wait to fall in love again, but I hope and pray it is a very different kind of love.
I don’t want someone to be my other half, I want someone who makes me feel whole on my own. I don’t want to miss someone so much it hurts, I want to know that even when I am apart from him I can trust him and know that he is coming home to me. I don’t want him to be my last thought when I go to bed at night because I want him to be beside me when I go to bed at night. I don’t want him to be the best part of me, I want him to encourage me and push me to be the best self I can be on my own. I want a partner. I want someone I can rely on 24 hours out of the day, seven days a week. I want a love that makes me smile and go to bed completely content with my life, not one that keeps me up at night. I don’t want a man who treats me like a princess and the most precious thing in the world, I want him to treat our daughter like that. I don’t want to be the love of his life because I want our family to be.
My ex taught me more about love and life than he will never know. After the break up my friends always told me that he would never find someone who loved him quite like I did. They said it to make me feel better, but I hope the same is true for him, too. We were young and naive and loved being in love, but it was the wrong kind of love. I hope it was a once in a lifetime kind of love for the both of us, and I hope one day we both find a better, more whole kind of love.
As I read that, I found myself thinking about my past relationship. I loved more deeply than I had ever loved before. It was the only person I have ever loved with such passion and emotion, that it was draining. It's a kind of love that I never want to feel again. I will probably never love any boy as much as I loved this one, and that's ok because it was too much. I couldn't handle the amount of love that I had for him. I wanted to give him the world, and I based all my actions, thoughts, and feelings, around HIS. I painted this life in my head with him at the center of it and I tried my hardest to do everything possible so that that Life could soon become a reality. We talked about what we wanted out of life, and I shared my thoughts and my dreams.
I told him, "I want a 3 story house with a beautiful yard. I want to live a maximum of 5 minutes away from my family because I want my siblings right next door. I want my kids to grow up knowing who God is, but I also want them to be able to decide for themselves what they believe. I want to own a business and I want my husband to enjoy whatever it is he wants because as long as he works hard, the money will come. As long as he loves what he is doing, I will support whatever dream he has. I want a husband who will build me a dinning table and a rocking chair. A man who has blisters on his hand showing me that he works hard. I want him to work hard, because I will work hard right along side him. Lastly, I want to be married in the temple because I will be damned if I can't spend eternity with my husband and 12 kids. & Those are only SOME of the things that I want out of life."
He simply agreed. He promised me these things. We promised each other that we would work towards those goals. For all five years, I was convinced that this was exactly what he wanted too. But he didn't. He loved me enough to try and give me all these things, but he resented me for not encouraging his dreams. I loved him so much to keep putting off the things that I wanted out of life on hold, and we were making sacrifices for each other, and some how we weren't getting anywhere near these goals. We loved each other, but it's the wrong kind of love.
I told him, "I want a 3 story house with a beautiful yard. I want to live a maximum of 5 minutes away from my family because I want my siblings right next door. I want my kids to grow up knowing who God is, but I also want them to be able to decide for themselves what they believe. I want to own a business and I want my husband to enjoy whatever it is he wants because as long as he works hard, the money will come. As long as he loves what he is doing, I will support whatever dream he has. I want a husband who will build me a dinning table and a rocking chair. A man who has blisters on his hand showing me that he works hard. I want him to work hard, because I will work hard right along side him. Lastly, I want to be married in the temple because I will be damned if I can't spend eternity with my husband and 12 kids. & Those are only SOME of the things that I want out of life."
He simply agreed. He promised me these things. We promised each other that we would work towards those goals. For all five years, I was convinced that this was exactly what he wanted too. But he didn't. He loved me enough to try and give me all these things, but he resented me for not encouraging his dreams. I loved him so much to keep putting off the things that I wanted out of life on hold, and we were making sacrifices for each other, and some how we weren't getting anywhere near these goals. We loved each other, but it's the wrong kind of love.
You should feel WHOLE on your own without the need of anyone else's approval. You should be content with who you are. You should have your own dreams, desires, and goals before you jump into anyone else's. I wish him happiness and I hope that we both can find the kind of love that makes us want to be better for ourselves and not for the anyone else. I hope we find the kind of love that brings out the best in ourselves FOR ourselves.
In class we discussed communicating and why our relationships are so flawed. When you aren't honest with YOURSELF about what you want, you can't communicate honestly with the people you are in relationships with about what you want. I struggle to be honest with myself about the things that I want, and I don't really have an idea of what I personally want, so when someone throws an idea out there, my first response it to just agree and be ok with whatever they decide. I am trying to do better about finding what I want before I jump into another relationship. I hope that we don't get too wrapped in other people's wants and desires that we forget to acknowledge our own.
Til you read again,
-me
