Would You Risk Everything For Another Shot at Love?
A girlfriend of mine says she’s fallen in love. She’s met him only three times – he lives thousands of miles away in the United States. She now talks of how she plans to move there at the end of the year: she’ll find a new job; move away from her family and friends. Her eyes go soft and dreamy as she talks about their future… in her mind, he’s The One.
I love this woman. I love her like a little sister. She’s only 27-years-old. I know how badly she wants to find the Real Thing, how much she wants children, and the family dream.
Yet I am torn.
A part of me applauds her: her commitment, her willingness to believe in love and give up all that she has here to pursue it. A part of me is envious too – for she has freedom and youth on her side; no mortgage to pay, no children to feed, no messy divorce to tie up.
Yet I’m also very frightened for her.
Does she really love this man, or is she so desperately in love with the idea of being in love that it has convoluted her thinking? Why can’t he be the one to sacrifice, to give up his job, to say goodbye to friends and family, to move here to Calgary?
I want to believe that their love is true, that her choices will shower them with good fortune. Yet I haven’t seen him prove his love to her in a hundred different ways; I fear he’s not good enough, that he will sell her short. I see a guy who, although he has feelings for her, is willing to sit back, go on with his unchanged life, and make her be the one who takes all the risks.
I wonder if I’ve become cynical. Maybe I’m transferring my own pain and jadedness from infidelity and divorce onto her situation. Maybe I’m becoming one of those embittered women who say, “BAH! Weddings. True love. It’s all crap.”
I want my girlfriend to be nauseously happy. I want her to prove me wrong, flaunt it in my face, and maybe even restore my own beliefs in love…
But when I think about her situation, my chin drops; my stomach knots. And I wonder how many women have risked, moved away, abandoned their lives to chase their hearts into unfulfilling relationships and marriages. I wonder how many dreams and passions got indefinitely put on the backburner because of the non-stop ensuing responsibilities of children, working, and being a wife.
And I wonder, when women’s dreams come up short and their Real Lives begin to eat away at their souls, how many wake up each day and stare out the window thinking, “Why did I give up it all up….for love?”
4 comments
I say, time will tell. If she doesn’t plan on moving until the end of the year, that is good because it will give her time to make sure that is what she wants. Also, if he is not right for her, maybe she will notice it before it’s time to move. The other thing, if she has youth on her side and she moves to be with him and it doesn’t work out, she can always move home I know a girl that it happened to and although it took her some time to figure out the guy was just good for her, she came back and is not happily married here, with a newborn…just trust that time and your friend will determine what the best thing is for her.
Everyone is looking for the end of the rainbow, some find happiness along the way, others discover that the proverbial pot of gold doesn’t really exist and fall by the wayside. There is no point in glamorising this concept as there is no point in ridiculing those that inherently seek it. I personally don’t think that just meeting someone three times is enough to advocate a total change of life style, but that is how I feel and is not relevant in this debate. Real love should be something that is shared, protected, nurtured and experience by both individuals until the day they die. It should be a warm wonderful experience that concerns loyalty, commitment, truthfulness, understanding, compassion and total friendship. You may ridicule this ideal by placing your own traumatic experiences in the way of new thought and emotionally down grading the possibility that true love could in fact occur in your own future. You visualise a similar situation repeating itself in her life and simultaneously provoke the concept that you are somehow the guilty party in your own failed marriage and become emotionally angry that she might experience the same. Once you too believed in all the ideals I have previously mentioned but now find it difficult to comprehend true love without reminiscing upon the injustice that was laid upon your own doorstep and this, maybe in part, where your own feelings of envy and jealousy originate. I think that your friend, if she feels so passionately in love with this fellow, should go out into the big wide world and see how things turn out. Never the less if you are as true a friend as you say you are then you should make it known to her that you will always make sure that there is always a warm place for her to return should anything go wrong with her new found relationship. You, after all, are her friend. Perhaps, if the whole idea of this concerns you as much as you indicate, it might be as well to hint or ask her if there was any possibility of this fellow making a trip to Calgary. At least if he did turn up he would be showing something of the true extent of his feelings for her. Often telephone conversations seem so gloriously ideal and frequently remind me of the old time radio shows my mother used to follow so diligently. As with those radio shows, your own imagination has a lot to do with how you perceive an event, location or someone to be and rarely turn out to be what they truly are. As we all know the spoken word and books in general are primarily based on this principle. To conclude I would say that I know that if I shared the same feelings for someone I would think nothing of flying out to see them, meeting their parents and generally finding out something more personable about them than just an alluring voice at the other end of a telephone. I truly hope your friend finds what she is looking for and experiences a life time of love and devotion for her commitment to this fellow. And as for you dear lady, well I know you will find what you’re seeking in life because you already know what to look for.
Thanks for thoughts guys. It’s hard to tell sometimes where my own jadedness begins and ends. The whole true love thing is something I ponder and call into question; I worry she is believing in a dream that will cause her to sacrifice and suffer. But yes, she must figure it out on her own. And I will stand behind her regardless.
Alan, I’ve tried to talk to her about it, to suggest perhaps he come here to at least prove his devotion. So has her sister and mom. But she gets defensive. She closes down all conversation. She’s made up her mind.
Oh, but to be 27 again:)
I did what your friend did but i did it for my husband and if I am to be honest, for myself. I did it to not have to face the reality that I was tired of running a business and unfulfilled in my spiritual life. I did it cause i felt insecure and did not believe that i had a right to want something different. He was a dreamer where what he or we had was never enough. He had always been like that always looking for the greener pastures. He wanted more but i just wanted security, to love and be loved, to play and work, raise a family and appreciate what i had, to stop striving for perfection and love what i had. I felt very lucky back then and it was enough for me to love a man who didn’t get intimate emotionally as long as i knew he loved me. He said he did and he said he would never leave his family. I believed him because i guess for me that security meant more than the intimacy. I often felt his love for the children was stronger than his love for me and in truth i guess he stayed cause he always wanted children and i got pregnant very quickly.I never had a father and had a hard relationship with my mother. I never really felt loved and was wrought with fears of abandonment for not being good enough. I stayed in a 14 year relationship prior to my husband in order to not have to face my fears of being alone and not worthy of love. I can not even tell you what i have done in all my relationships except to say that i stayed and accepted the emptiness as my own. I withheld in my own way being to afraid to express my needs or even admit i had any except talk to me, which the ones i’ve chosen never did.. I was always the independent easy going woman. However inside was rage and shame when these men eventually took their love away from me but i stayed thinking if only i…………he would love me again. back to my husband. I believed he was perfect, i idolized him (and my problem is still do) and couldn’t believe how lucky i was to have found a decent man who did not criticize me or try to control me or so i thought. However he was a man who did not speak. he was secretive and unsharring of himself with me, my family my friends. He would only hang out with his french friends and it seemed my people were never good enough for him. He was the strong silent type who seemed he could handle anything and said he could. I did not feel judged for my weaknesses but i also did not feel included, important, needed and eventually loved. I could not get upset without him clamming up and if something upset him i would never know except he became more and more distant and more and more unhappy. I had lots of girlfriends, my family that was not always easy but loyal, and a career that i had spent 20 years building that on some level i was tired of and just wanted to focus on being a mom and a wife and finding my center. In truth i was bored but lacked the confidence to want more and believed my husband when he convinced me that moving to France would bring us closer. It didn’t. My anxieties returned in a big way, my self loathing at having gained 40 pounds over the course of my two pregnancies, which is in part why i was unhappy in my work. I was in the fashion Industry and was ashamed at my weight yet i kept eating and procrastinating to fill the emptiness within myself, my marriage. I longed for him to love me the way he used to and blamed myself for the weight but overcompensated by being a great mom and tried to be a loving and understanding wife following him in his decisions. I stuffed down my fears but started having panic attacks that just made me feel all the more undeserving and unlovable. Well the move to france was not easy, my children had a hard time adjusting, i had a hard time adjusting and my husband had a hard time adjusting even though he is from here. He was never home, always grumpy and when he was home he just slept and kept to himself. I felt lost and alone so i made friends and ignored my husband thinking he would snap out of it at some point. He didn’t. He became very cold with me and i became more and more insecure and lost. I was feeling very unsafe in the world and started having anxiety and panic over everything. I lost confidence in my ability to just live, be a good mother and navigate my way through French culture all alone. Well i found out in August a year and a half ago that he was cheating and in September he moved out. I have fallen into a serious clinical depression and for the first six months could not stop crying, could not sleep, eat or function really well. I am still seriously depressed and afraid because i can’t find my self love and can’t let go. It has been complicated because with two kids i could not just up and take them back to the states without serious international law consequences. I am dependant on him financially and very self destructive having started smoking like a chimney. What i wish for now more than anything is to love myself again, to see beauty, acceptance, spirituality, love, understanding. I have slept with men but feel nothing, i am closed and bitter but mostly i am in rage and am taking it out on myself. I have so much anger and rage that it is eating me up. i want to punish him for the injustice, the betrayal but he won’t feel guilt or remorse or regret and that in itself makes me feel even angrier. He has taken a spiritual aproach to this whole thing and seems at peace with his decision while i am flailing like a crazy wild angry woman inside for having given up everything for romantic love. For idilic family, marriage, commitment, through thick and thin. How do i get passed this anger and forgive him but mostly myself. I am so desperate to heal but the anger, hurt and rejection are haunting me. It is like this little girl in me wants to destroy for all the wrongs done over a lifetime of dissapointments in love. I know i need to forgive and find my own life now but i am rebelling because i wanted to be taken care of for once in my life and even though i know this is childish, he said he would and i believed him. I am angry at myself for having believed such things as a woman in her mid forties. I feel like such a fool. So here i sit in france trying to reconstruct a life with only myself to believe in. Financially insecure for the future haven given up all the external identities and comforts that made me who i am. I am fighting to return to the states but wonder if that is really what i need or to find peace exactly where i am now. At home scouring anything i can find on the internet about getting through a divorce and betrayal in a foreign land.