“The heart is your student

For love is the only way we learn.

Night has no choice but to grab the feet by daylight.

It’s as if I see Your Face everywhere I turn.

It’s as if Love’s radiant oil

never stops searching

for a lamp in which to burn.”

~Rumi

Being a student is the role in which I am most comfortable. I know the syllabus, the expectations, and the assignments upfront. I know how to succeed in this format. When it comes to learning about love, I tend to treat it like a class. I read all the books and seek out all the wisdom I can find on the subject. When love doesn’t go my way, I use those instances as lessons so that I don’t make the same mistakes twice. The problem with this approach is that every love situation is different, and you are dealing with a completely separate set of factors in any given relationship. Add in past experience and trauma on both sides, and it’s basically an improv class gone bad every single time. That’s not to say that all of my love experiences have been bad, but every single one up to this point has eventually left me alone, processing the relationship to the point of exhaustion.

I can also say from experience that books can only teach you so much. They can resonate with you intellectually and make sense logically, but love isn’t logical. And the only way to truly learn who we are and how we function in relationships and love scenarios is through those experiences. Books can tell us all the ways to communicate and have effective conversations, but they won’t tell you when the other person shuts down and doesn’t allow you to speak even a word. We can know not to ever chase a man in any situation ever until one day our heart is aching to be heard and understood and we can’t stop our fingers from typing the words through a long text message. All the wisdom in the world can be digested thoroughly and studiously, but we don’t choose love, it chooses us…and with that, come so many unknowns. For one thing, we don’t choose the timing of love. It usually hits quite unexpectedly when, even if we thought we were ready, we find ourselves furiously processing what is happening trying not to screw it up, sensing that this person is someone special while simultaneously trying to determine how we feel about it and if we truly are ready to take that leap into the abyss. So we stumble along and lose our footing, scrambling to keep up with our feelings and our partner’s expectations while simultaneously trying to figure out that person’s neuroses, their nuances, habits, sense of humor, and idiosyncrasies. Then try doing all of that while processing our own fear of commitment and trying to dismantle our own walls that we’ve carefully built up for over a decade. No amount of therapy, education, or self-reflection can prepare someone for this clash of relationship titans (sorry, my daughter watches a lot of anime including Attack On Titan).

Another unknown that love brings is all of the past baggage and trauma of the partner that you now also have to navigate through, praying not to hit on a trigger that sends them running away. It’s a minefield that we are not prepared to navigate. All the books would tell you to trust the process and give them the benefit of the doubt, but the whole point of dating is to build said trust so what happens until then? Not only do we have to trust that they will also give us the benefit of the doubt, but we have to trust that they have our best intentions at heart as well. We have to assume that certain behaviors that trigger us don’t mean the same thing that they did with the last guy we dated…the one who strung us along and then ghosted us when something better came along…or some other nightmare scenario. My point is…love is a battlefield. We go to battle every single day, whether we are in or out of relationship, not knowing what the next day will bring or how it will end. No one likes viewing relationships as a series of conflicts but…aren’t they? So why do we continue? Why do we keep fighting? I have a few thoughts on that.

There is a movie, Moulin Rouge, that says it best: “The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” We seek it out because as humans we need connection. We need love in order to learn the only lessons in life that matter, how to connect and love one another as fully and completely as possible. Through relationship, we learn how to love more fully and more deeply, through open-mindedness, compromise, communication, patience, persistence, forgiveness, trust, and faith. The trick is finding that person willing to take that journey with you and you alone.

Having said all that, I have figured out a few nuggets of wisdom to help me along the way. Some of these lessons I have to keep re-learning but, nevertheless, each time I re-learn them at a deeper level, they make me a better, more fully actualized human. We’ve heard them all before, but maybe not in this way:

1. We do have to love ourselves first before we truly love another, but we don’t have to always like ourselves and we can often be at battle with our own neuroses while navigating relationships with others. Relationships are what give us the insight, the lessons, and the clarity about ourselves. It is important, though, to go easy on yourself and love yourself through the times when you inevitably screw up. We are all human and we make mistakes; it’s a given. No success has ever been achieved without first failing, sometimes over and over again.
2. Vulnerability does mean having the courage to be open, honest, and sharing how you feel; however, what people miss (including me) is that, maybe more important than being open and forth-coming, vulnerability is being able to receive the love being given to you. This is something I recently learned. I thought that sharing how I felt was enough, but I realized I had too many walls up, and my partner could feel that resistance. If we aren’t allowing the love to get in, we aren’t sufficiently connecting with the other person, and it will destroy any chance at love. Until you are brave enough to also receive the love you are trying to share with another person, you will continue to hit a wall in the relationship (no pun intended). That might be my greatest regret in love to date, but at least I finally learned this important detail about connection. It sounds obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me. Hey, it only took me forty-three years; some people never learn this. And I didn’t learn this in a book; I learned it through experience…and maybe a slight push from Brene Brown who, of course, is the vulnerability queen…and, who at the very least, introduced me to any awareness of the importance of vulnerability. She made me aware of it, but only experience allowed me to see and understand where I failed in my own situation.
3. We have all the time in the world to find love. I say this because, with the last guy I dated, I thought I had more time to open up and let down my walls. He decided much earlier than me that he wasn’t willing to put himself out there for someone who wasn’t putting herself out there, too. So, I did run out of time, so-to-speak. But here’s the thing: There’s nothing that says that relationship can’t try again if the opportunity presents itself down the road. And regardless of that outcome, there are billions of other potential partners out there. I know that every “single” person hates this piece of advice (myself included), but it’s true. You could meet “the one” tomorrow and have an immediate connection…or you could meet “the one” in another five years and have some amazing single experiences and growth opportunities until then. We can’t control timing, but we can control what we do in the time we are given. Live in the present and appreciate the love that is in your life right now through friendships, family, etc. Whenever I get low or sad about being alone, I get thankful…because I am not alone. Gratitude is my antidote to grief and suffering.
4. I don’t think I am the only one who suffers from the need to control, so I know we can all relate. The majority of the fear that manifests for me in relationships is lack of control over a situation. When I am operating in fear and feel myself losing my grip on the relationship, I get out of my head and into reactionary panic mode, otherwise known as fight or flight mode. This is the absolute worst place to be in a relationship (and if you find yourself here you are almost always on your way OUT of that relationship). I personally tend to lean towards fight mode. FYI, this never helps but, to be fair, flight mode really doesn’t help either. Communication is the best policy and should be the go-to method for navigating any stage of a relationship. But, let’s be honest, not everybody is great at communication and a lot of people opt to either ghost or slide their way out in a variety of ways that save face by their own perception. If this happens, the best reaction is to LET THEM GO. It sucks, it hurts, and it’s hard…but it’s a must. I have been guilty of clinging to a relationship many times in my life, usually because I am looking for clarity, answers, and sometimes closure…but I am just going to tell you now…LET GO. Allow time for both of you to process. You won’t talk them out of the space they clearly need and back into a relationship they are trying to exit; you can only honor their wishes and work on yourself. But I can’t stress enough, if you do get clingy…and you probably will at some point because love makes us do stupid things…go easy on yourself. Love yourself through your mistakes and your pain. We’ve all been there, men and women both. It’s okay…you’re human and you went into survival mode.
5. I take pride in this one because it’s one I have mastered: Relationships evolve by nature. I don’t believe we are destined for any one person, and I don’t necessarily believe in a lifetime commitment to another person. We can go into any relationship with the best of intentions, but we will all inevitably evolve and change and, hopefully, grow. There are any number of factors that determine whether or not we grow with or away from a love partner. If you do find yourself growing apart from a significant other and realize it can no longer remain a romantic partnership, you can still let it evolve into another form of relationship. I understand that not everyone can do this (and you may not want to do it if that person is abusive, manipulative, or just not healthy in your life), but chances are that the qualities you fell in love with still exist. There’s no reason you can’t benefit from each other as friends or acquaintances after some initial distance to grieve the loss of the love relationship. My ex-husband and I have been able to navigate this. Not without some serious work and communication and forced co-parenting, but we did manage it. And all the best parts of our relationship have been maintained through a friendship because that is what our initial relationship was based on in the first place. And with our history, what a shame it would be if I couldn’t be friends with this person who has known me since I was a teenager and is the father of my child. Only you know if friendship is a possibility but don’t rule it out…with time, patience, and an open mind.

Love is a battlefield from which nobody comes out unscathed. I have experienced a myriad of emotions just within the last couple of months thanks to love…from the depths of sadness and despair to un-attachment to hope and faith in the future, not necessarily in that order but, rather, all of the emotions incongruently in no particular order and usually at unexpected times. Love is hard ya’ll. I have explored the mystery of love all my life through a variety of mediums, and I am no closer to figuring it out to be honest. But I have learned how to cope and navigate through difficult love situations albeit imperfectly. What I try to keep in the back of my mind through life at all times are two mantras: 1) I won’t settle, and 2) I will love myself through all of it, gently and consistently. I wish the same for you.