I’m a bit of a romantic at heart. When I read books as a child I considered it inevitable that if I looked hard enough, I would find the love of my life. However, I’ve come to realize that The Princess Bride was not too far off when it speaks of how rare true love is – where two truly love each other. Life isn’t simple and love is even more difficult still. I’ve already written about what I believe are key factors that can be used when evaluating a partner. This isn’t an addendum as much as a warning.
I think the actual word love is probably overused. When I look back on the girls I dated, love can and has been used facetiously to describe all different levels of attraction. These levels of attraction where I’ve used the word love fall in the following range: general attraction (no contact) – acquaintance – friends – good friends – dated – friends with benefits- infatuated – “true” Love. And just to distinguish between the last 3, “true” Love is essentially those 3 combined along with two key factors: The person is your muse (inspires you, makes you want to be the best version of yourself), and the other key factor is selflessness. Selflessness isn’t just, I would die for you (which is likely to never be tested), it’s about your time, your money, your happiness. This “selflessness” has its own reward that you are happy knowing they are happy, regardless of what happens to you. But, this selflessness is also what makes one so vulnerable.
While I’ve had many infatuations, I’ve only had two loves and neither one worked out. The older I’ve gotten, I’ve been able to see more and more examples of what likely would have happened had I “won” over these girls when they didn’t truly love me in return.
Have you ever looked at an older couple where one of the partners snips at the other and the other partner simply replies, yes dear? I’ve heard their stories, though they are often reluctant to share. But almost without fail, one was so “in love” with the other and won the girl or guy. When they won, they probably thought, now it’s time for my “happily ever after”. That’s what I thought, I thought if I just won her, then I’d be happy. But what about the other person? I just assumed if I won, she’d be happy with me, but would she? Would she actually BE happy?
Here is the problem. because of the selfless aspects of love, you will tolerate a lot to not lose the feeling and see them happy. But if they don’t return that level of affection, this leaves you open to a power imbalance that is pretty likely to be eventually abused, simply because the selflessness leaves you vulnerable. Granted, there are worse things that can happen than being with someone you love who doesn’t quite return your affection. Ultimately no marriage is perfect and this advice is to just be aware of what is likely to happen if you love someone and they do not “truly” love you back.
To further the narrative, I’m going to talk about the girls I fell in love with and why they didn’t work out. I think this will help illustrate these points.
I met Rachel at a church camp called EFY, though we didn’t actually meet. Anyway, she called me after the camp. We ended up hanging out a lot and for our age, you could say we dated on and off for years. But it was hard because she lived about a half hour away. One of the times we were on, we had been talking on the phone a lot and when I saw her next, it just happened. It was just this avalanche of emotions when I saw her. It was like seeing her for the first time. We talked, we kissed. It was over for me. She said she loved me. She talked about marrying me and that she was never happier. I wanted to be everything for her. I felt like together we could conquer the world. My fondest memories during that time were little things like just walking arm-in-arm in the falling snow. She’d bump into me gently and smile, lean in, and place her head against my shoulder. It felt perfect.
However, before this moment during one of our previous off times, we had both been with others and she never actually ended it with a different guy. Not only that, but he had gotten her into drinking, smoking, drugs, and a crowd that did similar things and made her feel accepted. I knew about it all and while I wasn’t into that stuff myself, it wasn’t a big deal. Besides, she loved me.
As time went on, the talk of marriage slowed. But I felt things really changed when she chose to go to Las Vegas with that crew instead of being with me. She wrote it off at the time that it wasn’t a big deal and that she’d been planning it for a while. For me, it didn’t feel right when she left and things never really were the same after. Worse, she wouldn’t tell me what happened, what they did, where they went. Nothing. But she said still loved me.
After a while, she still hadn’t ended things with the other guy and it turned out he had also gone to Vegas.
But she still loved me.
Finally, she told me she was going to officially tell him it’s over and only be with me.
Then nothing.
I tried calling, but she wouldn’t call me back.
I was feeling empty and drove out to see her, but she wasn’t home and then I saw her car. Waved and… she drove away. I followed for a bit, she obviously saw me AND ditched me…
I got a call from the other guy that day -stay away from my girl! She doesn’t want to be with you!
I was confused, she must have given him my number, but it was clear that something had changed with her. I wrote her a letter telling her that I would always love her and essentially wished her the best. It completely broke my heart, but I added if she ever needed anything I would always be available, no strings attached.
She called me about a month later. She was so sorry, she said she should have called me. As we talked more over the following weeks, the feelings started to flame again and she explained what happened. She wanted to tell the other guy in person and he didn’t take it well. He grabbed her and threw her down and then laid on top of her. He was over double her size. She said she fought against him and screamed to get off her, but he said he wouldn’t get off unless she had sex with him. She said she struggled for about a half hour before she gave in. She said after they had sex she decided she liked it and wanted to stay with the other guy. But now after reconnecting with me, she was confused.
Through our relationship, she had told me some of the horrifying things this guy had done, but this latest news left me speechless. To say I was also confused was an understatement. She told me she still loved me and wanted to marry me but she had to sort through some stuff. Yeah….
Then she started mentioning a different guy from her group. He’s so funny, she said. He’s kinda cute, she said. Don’t worry about him, he’s already got someone. Then it was, “I accidentally played footsie with him for over 10 minutes!” Then, “he’s so silly, when I was hanging out with the group, he kept teasing me all night, he was chasing me and we stayed up till it was just the two of us…
We only talked on the phone through all this and I started to just feel like I was a friend to talk about the boys in her life. Then it got worse when she got a new job. Her boss wasn’t much older than we were. When she talked about her job she kept mentioning how cute her boss was, among other things…. I know.
Christmas came. but I was excited for the break. Despite everything, it kind of felt like things were heading back on track, but then they weren’t. I talked about exchanging presents, but she was reticent. This was out of character because she was big into gift-giving. Eventually, she straight up told me to return the presents for her and she became very distant. But then her work gave her two weeks off and suddenly she was calling me and talking about gifts and how much she loved me and so forth. So I got the presents together again. Through break, we seemed to just always miss each other, out of town, etc. The next thing we knew she was going back to work. Then literally days later, she was irritated that I had bought her gifts and again said I should return them… Coincidence?
It was too much. I had to end things, but it was too difficult. When we were talking one time, it just felt like the same thing over and over. Almost subconsciously, it started, I knew one thing that irritated her, and I started repeating the bad things about the other guy back to her. She lost it, cussed me out, and then hung up. There was so much more I wanted to say, in that situation it never comes out eloquently, after a couple of calls, I let it be.
I wanted to me wrong and I hated myself for jumping to the conclusion. I kept second guessing myself. But one day shortly after it ended with us, I got the heart wrenching confirmation and I definitely wasn’t far off with my suspicions.
Months later she mailed everything back to me that I’d given her with insults and profanity written all over every item. It was pretty rough stuff. But what she really said to me through her insults was that it definitely wasn’t true love for her.
There were other red flags and I won’t go into all of them, but suffice to say, it all added up. One red flag that is worth mentioning and helps put things in context. Over time, she recanted every bad thing she had said about the other guy. Pretended she never said it and got irritated if I ever mentioned the things she had told me. Meanwhile, I talked more with the other guy than just a few words. I told him just a few of the things that she said about him and he called HER a liar (not me) and that she’s the one that gets mean at times. He said her dad pulled him aside one time and said that if he was going to be with her, he needed to control her. How do you respond? I didn’t know either. I don’t know if she lied about him or if he lied and was controlling her. But I did know, I fought for her and she should have fought for me. What happened between them is just going to go down as one of life’s great mysteries. I do get the feeling he was probably the manipulative one, that she was being controlled and she simply created a delusion to deal with the stuff and that control led her to try to break free in any way possible, but who knows? It could just be me “white knighting”. Funnily enough, they are married and still together as far as I know.
I’ll always love her, or at least who she was when things were good. Despite what she eventually said and did. I had no interest in trying to control her and am glad I didn’t try to. Regardless, I truly hope that she is happy wherever she is, even if it will always hurt me a little. I still cherish the memories.
One of the things she said at the end was she regretted ever spending a dime on me. I couldn’t pay her back in that moment, but would have. I had done so during previous off and on moments. It’s moot now, but if I heard it still bothered her, I’d pay her back without a second thought. I didn’t and don’t regret any of it. If paying her back somehow puts her at ease, then it’s not a hard decision, it’s just money and move on.
I met the other girl I fell in love with during college. However, in a way, it also started at EFY. See, I had a summer fling with a different girl I also met at EFY. She was fun, from a different state, but hung around for a bit after and so we got to know each other. We kissed and promised to write and… well, long-distance things and such. Later, while I was working at BYU in the cafeteria. I chatted up a couple of girls. I remember asking the smaller one some questions and I think she said something along the lines of, no! I’m her sister! They moved on and I kind of forgot about it.
Later, I was at a dance and I ran into the same girls and said something like, this is your sister, right? However, the girl got rather perturbed and declared, I’m not her sister, I’m Colleen!
We talked for a while just about generic stuff. Suddenly Colleen exclaimed, Wait, you’re Paul from Provo, you kissed Kristi (the girl from EFY)!
That was pretty hilarious. We laughed about it all night. Colleen and I got to know each other more as the night wore on and we just seemed to click. I got her number and we “dated” for a couple of months before the end of the semester and summer break. When summer came, she went home and we continued to write.
I’ll be honest, I liked her. I liked talking with her, I liked her fearlessness, and her kindness. I liked the way she did her hair, and how she dressed. I liked her laugh, her smile, her charm. But it was infatuation. I was also infatuated with other girls. So I wrote her while going out on dates with other girls. Then this kind of crazy idea was brought up by one of the girls I was “dating”, to come visit her home and hang out. It just so happened that two girls, including Colleen, were in the same area of the state. I thought, why not visit both? What could go wrong!? So I told them both I was coming to visit and told each that the other person I was seeing was just a friend, specifics weren’t important. So I booked a flight. When I got there, both girls were at the airport! One was there for me and the other for her friend. That was… awkward, but I made it through.
However, as I talked with Colleen, who was the first girl I had planned to visit. Pieces suddenly all snapped together and I just stared at her in awe and was thinking, WHY WERE YOU MESSING AROUND WITH OTHER GIRLS, YOU LOVE HER!!! I panicked, but quickly reassured myself, dude, you’re golden, she totally loves you!
But then she got quiet in the car. “We need to talk”, she said. She told me that she had gotten the feeling that I wasn’t really into her and so she had started dating other guys. There were two guys from her home that she was interested in, could even be said to be dating – “but we can still be friends!” I was devastated. My hubris had cost me someone that I had just fallen for.
That trip was a riot, let me tell you.
I tried in vain to win her back over the next couple of months, but she was thinking we were just friends. So that dynamic made things… awkward. She finally put down an ultimatum and asked what’s up? I spilled the beans that I loved her and she responded, ooohhh.
I should have just let her go because everything with her just turned more awkward and cringe. But every time I seemed to step on a rake, she seemed to understand and didn’t completely blow me off. It was kind of sweet misery.
I left the country on a church mission, continuing to leave a trail of cringe, determined to find myself again. While out, I ran into a guy I knew from one of my classes. We chatted for a couple of hours and were showing each other photos of our family and friends. As he was rifling through my photos, he stopped at a photo of Colleen. Dude, you know her! He started laughing hysterically for a few minutes, I just stared confused. He finally explained, “This chick was seriously crazy. She came to like every performance we had and would stand in the front. She’d send me all these love letters and poetry about how much she loved me! “
I was shocked, but asked, “So this was in the fall? “
He was like, “The whole year, really ramped up in the winter semester towards break and she wrote about how sad she was that she wouldn’t be able to see me all summer!
That left me in a weird place. I was jealous, I was angry, but was ultimately… understanding. It just kind of goes with the theme of this. Everyone is in love with somebody else. She had been in love with a guy who didn’t return her affection. Then I was in love with her and she didn’t return my affection. And other girls were in love with me and so on down the line. I wouldn’t be surprised if her experience had made her more understanding of how I felt. In the end, I just decided to put all that aside. I needed to work on myself and get my head clear. I knew that I had to be the best version of myself to even have a chance to “win” her. But some things are easier said than done.
I never saw that guy again, and I never talked about him with her. During the mission, she was only kind to me, she wrote me throughout and I looked forward to every letter she wrote. At the time I wished she had written more, but retrospectively, she was actually amazing at writing me! On the other hand, I was not so good at writing to other people.
After I came back home, she had changed a lot and if anything, this change made us align more philosophically, but we didn’t realize it at the time. I probably should have stayed away for a while so I could reacclimate myself and get my head straight from mission stuff. But no, I jumped right back in and it was like we jumped right back into pre-mission dynamics. I knew, mentally, that I had to work on myself and be the best me, but the infatuation part of love is like a drug and it’s like you will do anything to be around that person. But, being an infatuation addict is NOT the best way to win someone over and it certainly didn’t work for me (with either girl). Eventually, she told me she had started dating a guy who was tall, good-looking, athletic, and from a very rich family. She even showed me a picture, she said things were getting serious. I was done. I stopped calling her and she stopped calling me.
About a year and a half later, she called me out of the blue. She told me she was marrying someone else. Things didn’t end well with the other guy. So she had picked things back up with a different guy I had met once at her apartment. He was graduated and now living out of state. She said his proposal was basically, hey, I’m not married, you’re not married, whaddaya think? She sent me her wedding invitation. I didn’t go.
We reconnected later. We were both married and were able to laugh and talk freely about how things went down. It was nice. We were both going through difficult patches. I think some of the realities of marriage were hitting both of us and she wasn’t particularly happy at the time with whom she married. But he seemed like a decent dude and I said so. We talked off and on for a year or two and eventually, life changed and we drifted apart again.
I can’t say what causes one to fall in love considering it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. But it feels like you were only living with half your heart before you met them and when you are with them, you just feel complete. I almost feel like it’s blasphemy to say that I fell in love with two girls. That seems to go against every romantic bone in my body. But, you don’t choose who you fall in love with. Plus, it’s like one overrides the other. It’s weird how it happens. For me, over time, it was just pieces of personality and attractiveness collided and wham bam bibbidy bam. You can try to guess at factors. Wealth? Neither was even close to the richest I dated. General Attractiveness? Neither was objectively a 10 nor objectively the hottest I had dated (even though to me, they were). So those things weren’t the sole reason. It’s this combination and level of personal connection, it’s personality, physical attraction, and just overall how you seem to sync up when together. But neither was “love at first sight”. I think infatuation and obsession often gets mistaken for true love, however, infatuation can grow into true love as happened with me.
However, if you look closely at both the stories you may see the warning.
With both girls, I was scared of them. I was scared that if I didn’t say everything absolutely perfectly, they would disappear. That’s the infatuation part of love (And boy, did I not say the perfect things!) When I was around them it was almost like I was a drug addict, I was willing to say/do anything to try to keep that feeling. This also meant I was afraid to say things that needed to be said. Hypothetically, what do you think would have happened had I “won” them over? How long would they be happy? And going back to the beginning questions, would I have really “won them over” or would they just have settled for me?
Well, I know the answer now. I’ve seen it so many times it’s kind of scary. You end up in this power imbalance almost inevitably. This veers in one of two ways, in both cases, the one who is loved starts to wield that power with almost cruel indifference. Then the one who loves submits continually, or if it wasn’t really love, it will turn to despise and either controlling behavior or the two will simply lead mostly separate lives while living together. And as I noted, this isn’t a temporary thing in the first five years of marriage. If anything it amplifies over time. These dynamics will carry all through life, even when old and worn.
I was kind of lucky. I married a girl I was friends with AND infatuated with. The nicest thing about our relationship is there isn’t a power imbalance. We’ve had really fun times and really hard times. But through it all, we can be honest with each other without ego. Is it perfect? No. Life isn’t perfect, let alone marriage, but at least I have someone I like to talk with and enjoy the good and the bad. We can be honest without worrying that one thing said wrong will cause the other person to run.
Honesty and openness were the problem with both the girls to a certain degree. If I had “won” the girls, I have a pretty good idea of what the relationships would look like now. I think in “hypothetical land” we would have had good times and bad times, like any marriage, but I think on the whole, Colleen would likely have treated me with indifference and Rachel probably would have been more snippy. Just based on how they treated me with a dash of what I know of them today. I do appreciate that Colleen was honest after I fell and never acted any differently than that she just didn’t feel the same way. However, with Rachel, she started to use my affection to get her way. It started out innocuous enough. But some things I wanted to talk to her about, bothered her and those talking points eventually became points of contention where she would threaten to leave me, cry, or have some other negative reaction. To me, they were important things that needed to be discussed if she was actually serious about staying together, let alone marriage, but it got to the point that if I even mentioned them, she’d withdraw completely and cut me out of her life for days and weeks. It wasn’t good for us and yet I put up with it because I loved her, I didn’t want to lose her, but I also wanted her to be happy. I felt for us to work, for both of us to be happy, we had to be able to talk openly. She didn’t and things would have just amplified if I somehow forced her to be with me. I strongly believe that at a certain point, the person you love needs to fight for you too. I still truly love them both, even if I’ve moved on. But I still truly wish for happiness and good things for their lives.
That’s one of the sure fire ways you know you truly loved them. Even if they hurt you, you don’t retaliate. In fact, it makes you happy knowing they are happier elsewhere. There’s no vindictiveness, no hate, no trying to hurt the other person. Just calm.
Going back to Rachel, considering she went scorched earth on me, says everything. She probably justified it because she was angry I brought up some of the gripes she had with the other guy to him, but I figured, if she really wanted to be with him, he should know what drives her away. From what I understand, it worked despite his scorn that it came from me. However, even if she did get angry, if she had truly loved me and was split between the two of us, it would eventually lead to forgiveness and an apology, even if it was a final good-bye and I’m sorry. But it never came. Instead, after months of consideration, her final good-bye was nothing but anger and hatred. Despite her actions, it doesn’t change how I feel, I still love who she was, even if it’s not who she is. I told her many times I was sorry for things I did that made her upset, but I never went after her or tried to hurt her. I just wanted her to remember the things she’d said about the other guy. In the end, I walked away. I never tried to control her or force her in any way, even if I could have. I’m at peace with it and still hope for nothing but good things for her.
Life goes on and other opportunities come along if you look. Ultimately, happiness is what you make, it’s not guaranteed. A person doesn’t make you happy. Don’t get me wrong, the right person can help you achieve happiness, but ultimately, you create your own happiness. There’s no happily ever after that doesn’t involve you constantly trying to create your own happily ever after. And if you aren’t happy, only you can change that. Just like no one can “make” you mad or angry. Emotions like happiness and anger are choices we have to make continually. If a person thinks they’ll be happy with someone else, it’s a choice to be happy for them. In the end, letting them go and choosing to be happy for them is best for all.
So this is a warning. If you love somebody, just be aware. You can often get someone to stay with you, marry you and go through all the motions. However, just because you’re with someone doesn’t mean it’s happily ever after. Just because you love someone and win them, doesn’t mean they’ll ever love you the way you want to be loved. But either way life is going to be hard, marriage is hard. Just be aware, but this is just a warning, we all do as we do.
There’s a song by Sting where the line goes, “if you love someone, set them free”. I can’t say I even like the song. But that one line just sticks in my head. To me it’s – if you love somebody and they don’t love you back, set them free. As in stop calling. Stop trying to force it. Learn to be the best you. In life, it’s surprising how much is not done and final even when it feels like it IS final in the moment. If you work on yourself, they may boomerang back and realize they love you too. If the person doesn’t ever come back, don’t worry because if you had stayed and won, you probably wouldn’t have been as happy as you think. But then again, odds are low to find true love for either party, So it’s a tough decision either way. Again, just be aware.
