I have decided to tell my stories about Love...one by one. Each story will have a goal and that goal is to teach whomever is reading it, a lesson about love.
Episode One
Sometimes falling in love happens at inconvenient times...like when you are already in a relationship, but you meet someone that turns your world on its side. For example, when I met Daniel. Daniel and I hit it off right away. We both had other relationships and obligations to focus on in life but were at the same place emotionally and mentally and also physically (meaning that we were together on a regular basis). There is something to be said about being in a person's day to day life. It seems to always lead to strong personal relationships...unless you really do not like one another at all! But Daniel and I were both very focused on why we were there. We both had goals and many things happening in our lives, and yet...there was a connection made between us, and it felt stronger than just friendship.
Neither Daniel nor myself had given any thought to changing our direction in life at the time that we met...nor the years that followed. But after several years of a peaceful coexistence, it started to become clear that Daniel and I had an easiness about being around each other. We had similar views and opinions. We never argued. We had the same sort of temperment as one another- neither of us particularly extrovert nor introvert. We enjoyed the same foods and could sit quietly in each other's presence without feeling the need to break the silence. We both had a gentleness and a way of getting people to talk to us about themselves and then genuinely caring about the other person's story.
Daniel had been married for a long time, I suppose from a very young age. From the outside, his marriage looked perfect. Nothing can interfere with a healthy marriage, right? My relationship was at a point where it could end or not end and I had lost feelings there for what would happen. I started to form an attachment to Daniel because of all of the things I described above. I felt that he was worthy of admiration and was very pleasant. He was also very handsome. I felt strongly attracted to Daniel physically. I felt like I knew him...from the moment we had first met I had the feeling of knowing him deeply. Over the years, I gave it very little thought. However, in the looming ending of my existing love relationship, Daniel came to mind more and more. I found myself comparing other potential partners to him, and they did not measure up. I had him on a pedestal.
I was afraid of how Daniel would respond if I ever brought up the idea that I was attracted to him...or the idea that I thought it might be mutual! After all, he seemed (to anyone who was watching)to be a happily married man. I decided one day that I just needed to tell him how I felt and ask him if it was just me alone feeling like there was something between us. His answer came in a long passionate kiss that he planted on me suddenly. The kiss went on and on, unapologetically. It was not just me that felt this attraction. Anyone could suggest that this was just infatuation but we were not teenagers. This was not some puppy love. We knew each other well- we knew nearly everything of importance there was to know about one another. This was love.
Alas, it was not meant to be.
Daniel was not going to disrupt his life, his marriage and his home. He acknowledged that the feelings of connectedness were real, and that he had felt them for probably as long as I had- also maybe from the first time we met also. But none of these similarities in our situations were going to cause Daniel to take action toward any type of partnership with me. In fact, he decided that his behavior had been inappropriate, and he stopped talking to me at all for years. He cut me off completely. The emptiness was so painful that it felt like he had died, and I was left to grieve that loss.
So was this actually love then? I guess I was wrong about what love was. I had decided that it was not just attraction or infatuation. It was also not just friendship. So what happened between Daniel and me? After a while, Daniel reached out and tried to see if I might stay in his life, but secretly. Perhaps our relationship would be about secret meetings to kiss or be more physical...but nothing of substance, because he was married after all. His wife could not know. To make it even worse, the affect I had on Daniel was so dramatic that although we did meet secretly a few times, he cut it off yet again because his wife could sense him being different and he was afraid we would be discovered. If we were, he would lose everything he had built in his life that was so important to him.
So...were Daniel and I ever actually in love? If it was not love, then what was it? I cannot speak for Daniel, but I know that when I realized what HE meant to me...how HE made me feel...I was forever changed and altered by it. I believe he was too, but I have no way of knowing because Daniel could never truly open up and be real with me about what he felt or wanted. I had believed that we were in love, maybe star crossed lovers. But what did he think of us?
I may never know what Daniel truly felt. But let's examine what this story taught me about love.
1. Love is NOT about what you feel. Feelings are an important part of Love. But they do NOT define what IS love and what is not love. In the case of Daniel and I, there were certainly feelings on both sides of the aisle. What was missing was not feelings. It was the ability to act on them. Daniel needed to follow his heart. His heart was with his marriage. it was not for me to decide whether or not it SHOULD be with his marriage...only Daniel could decide that.
2. When you love someone, there WILL be powerful feelings. Does this mean that what I said in number one is wrong? I said that love is not ABOUT what you feel...we are capable of choosing our feelings. We cannot be led around by our emotional responses on matters, or we will suffer constantly! Learning to manage our emotions is an act of maturity. If I stepped back far enough...and I did...I could see that my attachment to Daniel was causing me to suffer tremendously. I was CHOOSING to suffer. I was not accepting the situations as they were, but rather insisting that I stay in the emotions of a possible future with Daniel. In my mind, somewhere in time, there existed a scenario where Daniel and I could be lovers, partners...be together always. But this place of fantasy caused me a lot of sorrow because I was SO attached to that outcome. I was giving away ALL of my happiness in the here and now, to linger in the possibility of an uncertain future. This happens to a lot of people at some point in their lives.
3. You cannot truly love another person, unless you love yourself first. Don't you absolutely hate hearing this? Me too. Unfortunately, it's the truth. You can absolutely FEEL love for another person...you can want them, desire them, even crave them. But LOVE is not about any of those things. You see, love is perfection. It is not lacking anything at all. It is pure. TRUE love doesn't want or need anything from the other person at all. It just exists. So when people tell you that you need to love yourself first, before you can love another person, this is what they mean: PUT yourself first (your needs, your health, your happiness). When you live a life that reflects that you can do these things, then you have learned to LOVE YOU enough to then bring another person into that relationship. Your first priority in love..my dear friend...is to love yourself.
Episode One's lesson: NOT loving yourself first, will break your heart every time.
~Namaste
Lilac
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