I mean I did my share of assuming there was just something wrong with me, or with them—or maybe both. I’ve felt unlovable. I’ve felt lost. I’ve cried in dark bedrooms. I’ve wallowed. I’ve wanted to die. You know, the usual reactions—the broken heart’s greatest hits. But I never doubted love was real.

 

By David Jones

Valentine’s Day is coming, the holiday which reminds us that nothing hurts quite like a broken heart.

I remember watching the anger and disillusionment scroll by as an online friend vented. It was all the same stuff I’d read or heard before, but his conclusion made me a little sadder than anything else he said. After hearing all the backstory, the hopes, the expectations, all the joy that filled his most recent relationship, and how it all just disappeared one day, he told me he finally “got it.”

“There’s no such thing as love.” The F Word may have been included.

I think a lot of people have felt that way. Nazareth sang about how Love Hurts. J Geils Band sang about how Love Stinks. Tina Turner asked, What’s Love Got to Do With It, insisting it’s just a second-hand emotion.

We often speak from a place of pain.

I’ve hurt people and been hurt. I know how it feels on both sides. I’ve watched in distress as someone I was drawing close to worked to escape me, and I’ve struggled to reach a safe distance as someone I wanted to be friends with started to share feelings and expectations I couldn’t hope to match. But I’ve never been so lost in a sea of pain and tears that I concluded love was just a lie or a stupid dream.

I mean I did my share of assuming there was just something wrong with me, or with them—or maybe both. I’ve felt unlovable. I’ve felt lost. I’ve cried in dark bedrooms. I’ve wallowed. I’ve wanted to die. You know, the usual reactions—the broken heart’s greatest hits. But I never doubted love was real.

Now, I didn’t get that idea from mom and dad. They got divorced when I was a little kid and my mom spent most of the rest of her life bitterly hating the man she’d loved enough to marry. Dad said he was an idiot for driving mom away, and mom agreed with at least part of that. But all the bitter resentment and alcohol-fueled misery still didn’t dampen my belief that love was real.

My understanding continues to evolve. Love doesn’t magically fix you or your life.

It doesn’t guarantee that you won’t hurt sometimes, and it doesn’t banish feelings of loneliness or insecurity. I feel for anyone who believes it will or should. Life has a way of beating up ungrounded hearts and emotions. Love for someone in any capacity doesn’t preclude pain, misunderstandings, fights, or tear-stained pillows.

It’s a complicated thing.

Of course I’ve met plenty of people who are so burned from past relationships, so jaded and raw and angry that they can’t pass up any opportunity to let me know I’m just naive, stupid, or delusional for still believing in love. Because they’ve been hurt so deeply or so often, they become bitter towards anyone who reminds them of their scars. Now, I don’t blame them for distrusting love. Truly they speak from a true place of pain.

But it hurts when I get people insulting me because I believe in love. Even when I was married the first time and was so unhappy, I thought about ending it all (man, that’s been a recurring theme in my life. I probably ought to look into that….), I still thoroughly believed love was a real thing. Maybe I just wasn’t making good decisions in my pursuit of it, or maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was supposed to be.

It’s amazing how often in life we equate love with sex, companionship, desire or romantic ideals.

Love can be a component of them, but it’s not those things. I think our understanding of love should evolve and mature. But even with our worst misunderstanding of what it is, it’s still a real thing.

For the folks out there who’ve been hurt so much they angrily declare that love is an illusion— merely delusional thinking leading to harmful attachment, only a fantasy, nothing more than an electrochemical brain glitch that causes people to abandon rational thought—I’m very sorry you hurt, but I wonder.

Does it make you feel better to put people down who still believe in what you no longer can? Does it help the pain and suffering ease a bit to put me on blast because I’m content with how love has evolved for me? If so, then go ahead and bash away I guess. But I’d rather you took the time to heal.

I want you to be okay.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if people tell me love isn’t real. I’ve learned not to let others decide what I should believe, and I don’t need them to believe what I do. I’ve decided to have boundaries, where folks are allowed to feel their authentic emotions without me needing to fix their view and helping me resist their efforts to fix me.

And don’t worry, I’ll fail at all of these from time to time. But Buddha spoke of love as a reality. Jesus did too. Even if some of their followers don’t really believe them, I do.

So what is love? I don’t know how to explain it. But I hope everyone finds their own satisfying understanding of it one day. Until then, let me say that you’re not as alone as you feel. All of your pain sucks rusted barbed wire, but it will ease with time.

You are loved. Be well.

 

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Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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