Finding True Love
My view of love has changed over the years. I thought finding “true love” is about finding someone that you can connect with intellectually in addition to having that precious emotional and physical connection. I thought I had this “meeting of the minds” as well as body and soul connection with my best friend when I was in my early 20s… so, I married him!
We were very much in love and so connected in every way that we were convinced — and all of our family and friends were convinced — that we would be together for the rest of our lives. But, that didn’t happen. We were divorced in about three years!
It took me many, many years to figure out what really happened to us and that relationship. My ex-husband and I remained friends and we actually had a “postmortem” of the marriage two years after our divorce. We talked about what we could have done better, but I don’t think we really figured out what we could have done to prevent the divorce. We weren’t wrong about the connection — we really did have that special bond that many people could only dream of. But, we still ended up being divorced!
I thought that maybe we were just too young to get married… and most young married couples, pretty much, will probably end up getting divorced. We all start out with preconceived ideas — unfortunately, usually bad and misguided ones — about love, marriage and relationships, in general.
Most couples find out about what they really need in a relationship during the relationship. For people who get married because they’re in love, they will actually find out what they need in a marriage during the marriage. So, being in love and being very connected with each other wouldn’t really provide much immunity from the reality that usually hits couples during the course of a marriage… the reality of what they truly need in a marriage or from their partner.
So, what is true love? I believe that we all come up with our own definition of what “true love” is during the course of our self-discovery. Understanding one’s self seems to be critical in understanding what one truly needs in a relationship. Only after you know and understand what you need can you actually “get it” in a relationship. Before you understand that, it’s just a hit-miss proposition… and it would be difficult to choose your partner wisely.
Knowing what you need in a relationship and getting it – whatever “it” is that is important to you — seems to be the key to feeling fulfilled enough in a relationship to be happy. And being happy in a relationship, in turn, seems to be the key to feeling that one has found “true love.”
Does this sound backwards to you? Most people think they would find true love and then they would be happy. I guess I thought that, too. I guess most people, especially women, have heard about “finding true love and living happily ever after” so often and we’ve seen it so many times in movies and TV shows that we’ve all come to believe it. But, just like anything else, we all have our own view of what “true love” is. I do realize that some people think they’ve found “true love” and yet, they’re extremely miserable. I guess we all have to decide what kind of love is right for each of us.
To your happiness...
Allie
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