1) The mistaken notion of love at first sight.
Don't get me wrong, I believe it's possible to see someone and know that they are going to be important in your life (that goes for friendship as well as love). Intuition exists and can be very powerful. In fact, when I first saw the amazingly wonderful man to whom I am now married, I was captivated. Was it love? Maybe not... but I lost my heart right away.
I think one can be "in love" at first sight; but that love - real, lasting, true love - takes time to grow. I was certainly "in love" with X at the very beginning, to the extent that I knew what that was. But we did not know how to love each other. I did not love him for all his foibles and flaws; he did not love me for all my dreams and ambitions. His world was centered around himself and he wanted to fit pieces into it that he felt he needed: wife, child, home, etc. He did not expect to have to give anything to those responsibilities. This isn't to say that he didn't care for and about me - just that he never really understood me, knew what I needed or how to give it to me.
For example, in the days before our final separation I tried to explain to him that it wasn't enough for him to tell me he loved me - to say the words. I needed him to show me with his actions. He didn't understand how to do this. He sent a rosemary plant to my office ("rosemary for remembrance"). This was a nice gesture, but it didn't take much effort. I suggested he could start by cleaning up our condo - allow me to live in an environment that I found pleasing, rather than one full of clutter, dirty clothes and a kitchen counter compost pile. He said he couldn't do it - that he could never make the place as clean as I'd want it... he wasn't even willing to try. He wouldn't pick up his dirty underwear to save his marriage. This is what I mean...
As for me, I didn't bother to get to know who I was marrying. I was so ready to dive headlong into the idea of love without understanding what it meant. I had no idea what real commitment was all about. I truly believe that X went into the marriage with the intent to remain married for the rest of his life. I think he was oblivious to much that was going on around him (on one of our last days together, he said with sincerity, "I thought we were happy." I was flabbergasted as through the years he had suffered from alcoholism (probably caused by the strain of our relationship), had once physically attacked me, I had attempted suicide and been on anti-depressants, we had stopped speaking and spending time together and we hadn't had sex since the year we were married). Blind to our "shortcomings" though he may have been, I believe he never wanted the marriage to end. And I, who had been so careless about entering the relationship and the commitment, hurt him terribly by ending it. For this, I have to take full responsibility.
If we had taken the time to get to know one another... if we not rushed into the engagement and the wedding (which was just as much my doing as his)... if we had spent a few years as a couple, learning about each other... I am certain we would have saved each other a great deal of heartache. I am certain that we would have learned that we did not truly "love" each other - that we would have fallen out of love and would not have gotten married. We might have been "in love" at first sight... but not the kind of love that grows and lasts.
Love at first sight can't be trusted. It can be acted upon... it can drive us to the right relationship. But that relationship should be given time to grow in the light of day beyond the wooing period, without rose colored glasses. Two years became my guiding time frame. If you are still "in love" and do love each other whole-heartedly and without reservation after two years, you have a good chance, I figured.
I believe a lot of women get caught up in first (often false) impressions created by the wooing period (trick themselves into believing it's "love"). Just before I met H (husband), I met a Frenchman (the Frog) in Washington Square Park. It was Saturday morning, around 8:00 am and he was sitting across from me at the dog run. His dog - a rather ugly Boston terrier with only one eye - kept running over to play with me. The Frog moved to sit next to me and we ended up talking for hours. When it was time to leave, he walked me most of the way back to my apartment, asked me to come to his place Sunday night so he could make me dinner, then kissed me. It was only 11:00 am on a random Saturday and I was being kissed on a street corner by a handsome, rich, almost famous, very intellectual Frenchman.
I was certain that was the fairytale beginning of what would be a beautiful romance. Only it very much wasn't. I soon discovered he had a girlfriend in CA, he would only ever see me in his apartment and wasn't much interested in anything having to do with my life.
For several months I struggled between the fantasy my little brain had created upon our first meeting and the reality of my visits to the Frog's pad. I had such trouble letting go of my initial romantic impression, no matter how often and in how many different ways he proved that impression to be wrong. On paper, he was who I could see myself with and our first meeting was the story I wanted to tell. But nothing that followed resembled a relationship about which I could be happy.
Why do we do that to ourselves? Rather than thinking the initial meeting was an anomaly, I spent months wondering what I'd done wrong to change our dynamic. Tried to figure out what I could do to get it back to how it was the first time we met when he was pursuing me. Thought I had somehow screwed up and could change things if only I could figure him out. Thought I could make him want what I wanted.
What I should have said after the second "date," was "that meeting in the dog run was a lovely New York moment, but it was just a moment. This man is not who I thought he was that day. Time to move on." Because you can't live on one moment. Too many bad relationships develop and continue because we make excuses for the other person; we remain hopeful too long; we refuse to see the truth about the person we are with. We see them how we want to see them, not how they are. Or worse, we keep hoping they will become who we want them to be and allow ourselves to be continuously disappointed by who they actually are.
Had I not rushed into an engagement with X, I would have seen fairly quickly that our interests and expectations were not the same. Without the pressure of an "engagement" to call off, I might have had the courage to call a spade a spade and move on. If I had known how much a relationship can change when the initial "wooing period" ends... when you stop trying to impress one another by being someone your not... I might have known X was not "the one."
Relationships take effort, but that effort should make you happy much more often than not. If you are not happy, secure and uninterested in being with anyone else, you are not in the right relationship.
It may have been love at first sight... but that's not love for a lifetime.
To be continued with Lesson 2
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