When I was younger, I used to think that love, like money, grew on trees. All you had to do was wait for the right season to pick the ripest fruit; that love would bloom no matter what.
Bullshit.
Love, like money, is hard to come by. You have to bust your hump trying to get it. Sometimes, it eludes you, sometimes, you're broke, and the chances of winning the lottery are unlikely. But when you do, it's best to learn how to keep it. When things come in a mad rush of excess, you'll tend to take it for granted.
It's very hard to be articulate about cheaters and being cheated on. The only reason I mention this is because it seems to be happening too close to home. My girl friends are experiencing it and I try my best to talk them through it. I wish I could be there, you know, to just be there. I knew their boy friends and I knew how they were. Even I was shocked to hear what had happened and how they treated my friends, but certain things come to an end, whether we accept it or not.
I can't say I never saw it coming. Being the person outside looking in, it's easy to say that the relationship is doomed. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't tell my friends that the relationship is dysfunctional. They wouldn't believe me and they would try to prove me wrong. This is the tendency of the woman: to be loyal without thinking. We like to avoid "warning signs" for some odd reason. I think that a lot of us have the tendency to be stupid optimists (at times). He'll change, eventually. He's not always going to be this way. Some day he'll start thinking straight. Then we realize he's not ever going to change, that his life is having it's own party and we're not invited. Most of the time, we understand this too late, when we're in the throes of "unconditional love" and nothing is more important than saving the relationship and saving him.
Anyway, to make a long story short, there's nothing more that I want for my friends than to be with the person who loves them in the simplest, most uncomplicated way there is. I know their pain, I know how hard it is. You think that the world is crashing down on you, but when you wake up the next day, the ceiling is still there, the sun is out and everyone is happy except you.
My girls will eventually pick up and move on, but betrayal changes a life. I know it's changing theirs.
2 comments:
This is never meant to be an excuse or a rebuttal, just a lame attempt to answer some why's in a relationship.
I like it when you say "I wish I could be there, you know, to just be there."
If the situation is reversed, men would also gather and cheer up the victim, perhaps over bottles of beer. But we won't be as consoling and sympathizing as you; we would perhaps tease him or even suggest that "they're just women, there are others." Very typical machismo talk.
Of course that won't generalize all men. But the point is, women and men are so different, and that difference is so ingrained in our brain. We fall in love in a thousand, contrasting, divergent ways; we perceive pheromones in a very visual way, you do yours in probably the soulful, zen way (we don't really know).
The difference is there.
Perhaps we're not man enough to say bluntly, things like... "It is but a phantom that you love me," "I cannot give you what you seek," or "End is upon us." But you'll continue to cling: believe in the infallibility of (masochistic) love, deny the existence of "warning signs," hold on to the falseness of hope... then you reach the end of the road, and now without the lightning, you feel you've lost a lot more than you've ever invested in that relationship.
Love is not only blind, it's also a moron. And that applies to us, too.
Jerwin, dear, most of the time, we don't lose the relationship. Instead, we lose ourselves.
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