Thanks to Stephanie Meyer, E.L. James, Nicholas Sparks, and
John Hughes we are all programmed to spend our lives searching for our one epic
love. The one that will rock us to our
core, turn our world upside down…the kind of love people write stories
about. We look for it everywhere, and
whether we want to admit it or not, we want the Romeo to our Juliet, the Darcy
to our Elizabeth, and the Mr. Big to our Carrie. We have this subconscious
understanding that if we can find that one person out of the 7 billion people
on this earth that we are meant to be with we will, in theory, be whole. They will complete us in a way that we never
thought possible, and the void our man-less heart possesses can’t be filled
despite our best efforts, not even five cats will do. So we wait, spending our downtime picturing
the perfect guy that will swoop in and save us from our lonely, mediocre life,
give us the perfect relationship, and eventually deliver us the perfect
proposal that will lead to the perfect marital nuptials. PERFECT. We have this
cookie cutter idea in our heads of how the romantic parts of our life are
supposed to transpire. Truth is, love is messy. It’s tiresome, frustrating, and
a lot of the time keeps us confused. It comes at the most inconvenient times,
with a person we never expected…but the honest truth about love is that it’s a beautiful
distraction.
Often times when we feel like we have found the “one” we
devote all our time into making sure they stay.
We morph, change ourselves to try and become what we imagine they
consider perfect. There’s that word again. We listen to their music, watch the
things they like, and before you know it, we consider those things our own. We
leave a tiny trail of our former selves behind us, we don’t need those parts of ourselves anymore. We're complete, remember? Sometimes we get in so deep we let them do as they
please and reassure ourselves that they love us, even if they have a hard time
showing it. I witness this firsthand, often.
Our significant others tell us they love us, they wouldn’t be the same
without us, and they will take care of us. This is all well and good, and it
sure does make us feel good inside. BUT, call me crazy, but shouldn’t their
actions reflect their words?? When did it become the norm to keep us at bay by
telling us sweet things and not acting upon them?
So how do we cope? I
think we secretly love the pain, we all have a small case of masochism inside
us. We let them treat us like shit, but
we always go back for more. Why? Maybe
it’s because we dread starting over again, we’ve worked so hard on building
this bond that we would rather hold onto an unraveling relationship than leave
the pieces behind. Maybe we’ve forgotten
how to be alone, how to function in society without someone on our arm. So we hold on through the pain, convinced
that we can survive life like this. Perhaps if we wait it out they will realize
that what you have is real, that you are in it for the long haul.
We focus so much on making ourselves available that we don’t
see the signs that maybe it is time to leave, that our relationship is
unsalvageable. We cling tight to the good times that we’ve shared with a
person, and they cloud our judgment. We
block out the bad times in our brain, even if they outweigh the good. Let’s
say, hypothetically, that we do get the courage to leave. We pack up our baggage, mentally and
physically, head toward the door with our heads held high, and then there he
is, standing at the front door wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Brace yourself, because you are about to
become the bad guy. He’ll bombard you
with “Why?”, “We can work this out”, or my personal favorite, “I’ll change, I
swear I’ll change”. So now we are faced with a choice, do we turn our back on
the person who knows us better than anyone and start fresh, or do we stay on
the verbal assurance that things will be different this time? While the thought
of leaving the one we love sounds tragic in its own right, it’s not even the scariest
possibility. What happens if we start to leave and they let us walk away? Talk about
a lightning bolt to the heart. This romance, our “epic love” that we put so
much effort into is gone in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The idea that perhaps they wanted this all
along, it would certainly explain his lack of love. So what do we do then? Continue to walk away
and let the love fade with time, or do we suddenly become weak again and beg to
try and work it out? Either way, we lose once again. It would be so nice to win for once, wouldn’t
it? Gah.
Let’s be honest, the easy choice is to stay with him, we do
love him, after all. In my own life
experience I have allowed people to stay in my life far longer than I should
have. But how are we expected to let go
of something we have always wanted, even if the realities outweigh the
promises. The reality is, our choices define us. We make the choice to sit here and stare at
our phones, holding our breath every time it rings, hoping for anything to let
us know we were on his mind. I feel a
stab of defeat as the days rack up that we go without speaking, but per usual
when I feel like I’m done, his spidey-sense goes off. He knows just what to say
to keep me “just so”. I live on the
promises, thrive on the pain, and love the moments when he does something to
make me smile. Because through all the hard
times, and the good, we are all on this journey to find our epic love.
"Eventually all the pieces fall into place….until then,
laugh at the confusion, live for the moment, and know that everything happens
for a reason"-Carrie Bradshaw
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