The way things would have been

One of the great disappointments in life is when things don't work out the way we think they should. Perhaps there is no single situation where this is magnified more than in the love relationships we enter into. Those people who have strong egos and self-concepts firmly believe they are the captains of their own ships and the sole deciders of their own fate and, consequently, suffer more than others when they find out they're not. They become accustomed to success and do not easily tolerate failure of any kind, at any level. But as strong minded as these people can be, many find out that the control they have always believed they had over their own lives is sometimes nothing more than an illusion.

 

When we fall in love with another person, we immediately relinquish control of our fate and our destiny to them. This is so frightening to some that they intentionally build barriers around their hearts in an attempt to prevent this from ever happening. That would be relinquishing too much control over their lives to another person and so they firmly and steadfastly resist this temptation. Others, on the other hand, even though they have positive self-concepts and egos too, somehow realize the incompleteness of their lives amid the hollow external signs of success. They recognize at a deep emotional level that they will never come close to having it all if they deny themselves the joy and passion of loving another and having that love reciprocated.

 

So these people take a risk and the risks they take are not totally unlike the risks they have taken in other areas of their lives. People take risks every day in business decisions, buying and selling decisions, moving or staying decisions, etc. But the risks they take in love are much more fraught with danger than any other area of their lives because success or failure is now no longer dependent on you but on the other person as well.

 

For anyone to have even a chance of developing and maintaining a successful, loving relationship with another person, trusting and believing is an absolute priority. You have no way of knowing what the other person thinks and feels in the dark recesses of their heart and mind, other than the things they tell us and the things they do. Some of us are so romantic at heart, so in love with being in love, so desirous of loving and being loved that we sometimes don't even pay any attention to the words and the actions either. We tell someone we're in love with them, they tell us they're in love with us and the deal is closed, at least in our minds. Unfortunately, it's not always closed in theirs.

 

I was engaged in conversation the other day with a guy who had lost the love of his life and he said he simply couldn't get over it. Even more, he didn't WANT to get over it. He had searched the world and spent most of his life looking for that one person who would complete his picture and when he found her, he knew in a heartbeat that she was the one.

 

I shared with him that I knew and understood his dilemma completely because I, too, was experiencing the same thing. I had stumbled on to what I believed at my very core was the true definition of total love in October of 2000 and it has never diminished and never changed. We began to compare notes and to talk about the advice we received from our friends and quickly determined that our two situations were amazingly parallel. When things ended badly, everyone expected us to move on but we didn't. When we didn't, we were told that we should, but we still didn't. We were told that we couldn't live our lives in the past but we did. We were told to get over it but we couldn't. And the reasons we couldn't were the same.

 

We had found the One. We meant everything we had said to them and believed with all our hearts they had meant everything they said to us. We promised complete, exclusive, undying, uncompromising love for them and they promised the same to us. We swore our allegiance, our love, and our devotion to them forever and they swore the same things back. We meant all the things we said and still do. They didn't.

 

Sometimes our friends get upset at us, even angry at us, for not seeing the folly of our ways and going on down the road. I understand their need to try and help but it's no help when they tell us these things because they're not in our hearts and they can't get in our hearts. We swore we would be loyal, faithful, and true to them forever and we still mean that, even though they're no longer with us.

Those weren't promises made on the cheap; not promises made to make the other person feel secure in the relationship; not promises made out of a sense of obligation because they were making promises to us. These promises were made to them because we meant them then, we mean them now, and we will mean them forever.

 

A few months ago I started writing a journal and the title of my journal is the title of today's column. I started with the day things ended between us and I write four or five pages a day every day, as if we were still together, imagining what our lives would be like if we were. I'm up to almost six hundred pages now and have thousands more to write. I KNOW what our lives would have been like and I write those thoughts down every single day. People, even the so-called experts in the world of relationships, would tell me if they knew of my journal that I was living in the past and that I needed to catch up to the present.

 

What they don't know is that the past IS my present, because those were the best times of my life. Most people understand that perception is reality and my perception is that I'm still in love with her and she's still in love with me, even if only half of that perception is true. If you find the car you've always wanted, you look no further. If you find the house of your dreams, you look no further. If you find the perfect suit you need for an upcoming event, you don't go to another store.

 

And so it is with love. When you've had the best, there's no need to look at the rest. We don't get many opportunities to find perfection in this imperfect world but, if you ever do, there's no need trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

 

Once was enough. Once completed me. Once provided me with the absolute most perfect person in the world for me. And regardless of whether or not she meant any of the things she said to me, regardless of whether I was just a diversion for her, and regardless of whether there is any thought of me remaining in her heart at all, she remains in mine.

 

And she always will.