Since my divorce, I've been wondering how I might come to trust anyone after my two failed marriages to be a strong and lasting romantic partner. Those marriages failed for the reason I will explain below and in the following story.
I just read a "Dear Abby" article about a woman who was married for thirty wonderful years until her husband suddenly passed away. After seven years as a self-sustaining widow, she met a man with whom she shared a three-year-long relationship. Things were going great between the two until he got deathly ill. Then she took care of him and his businesses until he recovered. She said she did it out of love for him.
I've heard it said in movies that loving someone isn't the same as being in love with them. What the hell does that mean? The woman was shocked one day when her boyfriend suddenly broke up with her. Why? Look at how long we've been together, she argued. Look at all the good times we've had and all the memories we've made. Look at all I've done for you while you were sick. Does none of this count for anything?
Guess not. His answer was, "I love you but I'm not in love with you." So, bye.
Look, men aren't the only ones who pull this one-eighty. But, as I'm straight, that gender's flippant perspective on love matters more to me than my own. It matters so much, in fact, that it leaves me reluctant to re-enter the romance pool and tread water while I'm looking for a man who won't ditch me after three years of good times, memories, and generosity extended out of the goodness of my heart. Because I cared. Because I came to "love".
If "love" is different from being "in love", then screw it.
The "in love" kind of love tends to be petulant, flighty, foolish, unpredictable, and impermanent. Usually, it's how romance begins. It starts as infatuation, or lust. I don't mean here the sexual kind (as that's the infatuation that typically dies fast). I mean the kind that arises out of a longing for nothing more than the filling of an empty space. As in one's lonely life. The kind that thinks it's "in love". Sometimes, this kind of lust can grow into abiding love, the deep unconditional affection that can withstand the vagaries of life, the kind that feels "love". This is the love the "Dear Abby" lady had expected from her boyfriend.
Instead, his lust didn't mature into real love. He wanted the fun, the memories, the loyalty of a woman who would step in and support him in every way she could when he needed it. He simply wanted to fill an empty space in his life. And only for however long the individual adequately filled it. When he no longer considered their relationship adequate, that was the end of it.
I was there. Both my ex-husbands ultimately told me, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." One left me. I left the other. There was no point in staying.
I recently read an article describing a research study involving the differentiation in the attitude older men and women have toward romantic relationships. After divorce or death, the partner left behind ends up contemplating the value of getting into another lust/love situation. It turns out older men are far more likely to seek "lust" relationships in which the partner fills a void, allays loneliness, makes them happy, cares for them, provides for whatever needs they have.
On the other hand, and not surprisingly, the older women were more likely to say, "Screw it." They realized they wanted more than just a functional role in a partner's life. They wanted more than a superficial feeling of being "in love". They wanted to be loved, appreciated, respected, valued, prized. Probably because the relationships they had already been in failed to deliver that.
That and other studies show that most romantic partnerships are based in lust. We tend to search for someone to fill an empty space in our lives. And it never matures into the real and breathless beauty of true love.
A 117-year-old Italian woman who passed away in 2016 married in 1919 at 20 but left her husband in 1938 after her only child, a son, died young. She never remarried and never sought to enter into another relationship after that. She said that her excellent health and longevity reflected her decision to avoid the emotional stress it would ultimately incur.
Had she been in a relationship filled with love and devotion rather than "domination" (as she put it), the feeling that the more we try to please, the less we do so, might she have felt otherwise?
Might I feel otherwise? Ought I to jump into that pool, hoping to bump into the one man who would cherish me beyond being "in love" with me? My novels reflect such a love. Does it only exist in my imagination? If so, how did it get there if it isn't real? If it is real, why is it so hard to find?
Don't tell me that successful loving relationships and marriages require work. I have no doubt that many people put much work into a romantic partnership trying to make it succeed, but too often it all boils down to the lust versus love argument. Has no one ever said to you, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you. So, bye."?
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