[This is part 4 of a 6 part story I am sharing about the rise & fall of an on and off again relationship I had every hope & dream of being in for the rest of my life if we could just get it together, that ultimately -physically ended 60 days before I left the province and country for an undetermined amount of time.]

The interesting part here is that when we let go of what we think we want and we stop trying to control things and just be completely honest with ourselves and the people in our lives, something magical happens.

While I was seeing someone else and was being completely honest with *him* about it, as the natural laws work, it only made him want to try harder. This was not in my plan by any means in fact I wanted him to stop trying, to stop texting, to stop confusing me.

We remained in loose contact and when everything came crashing down with the “great catch” he was there to talk me through it, oddly enough.

In this moment I found in him a friend, something I had never quite felt before. He felt safer to me than ever, as I am sure anyone would in a moment where you find your boyfriend looking at transvestites online.

Once again (you’re probably so tired of this roller coaster by now) I gave in to seeing him. Lots of time had passed since I last saw him and his daughter. I agreed to meet them both for dinner and had no idea how doomed I was for doing so.

She was a little person now, not just a babbling 1 year old. She could eat sushi with chop sticks and carry a conversation and the two of them together were so ridiculously cute my heart melted into a puddle of surrender and I was once again consumed.

We spent a good part of the following months together but this was during the time my dog was dying and I was half chained to my home and my heart was not open for the kind of love and attention I wanted to offer him and he did not have the capacity for dealing with such a fragile situation.

There was also a part of me that always longed for us to be as we were in the beginning. To receive his morning texts like clockwork, to hear from him regularly not just every once in awhile, for dates and phone calls and effort, oh how much I craved that effort. So much so that when someone else came along and started to show the effort I so badly had wanted, I ate it up.

I once again let him know that I was dating someone else and had to let him go.

You may be thinking this isn’t “love” if I could keep moving on, and you’re probably right but I’ll get to that later.

The thing was, I was starting to realize that the dream I had created for us, the vision, the story, the idea was just that – an illusion. It was not real and no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t becoming real. We were consistently at a stand still. But what was real was my desire for it, so much so that I attracted it into my life often, just not with him.

This is the thing about universal laws. We can attract everything we want and desire but we cannot, no matter how bad we want to, control another person . The outcome of our situations depend on us, and us alone. We can desire and request love from the universe, but we cannot determine whether the specific person we have in mind will want or desire the same things.

Typically as I resolved to let him go, again, he pushed forward asking for another chance, to try harder and as I had begun to let him, he let me down again. I wish I could say for the last time, but not yet.

Sometimes no matter how much you love someone, you get to a point where you have had enough, where you have to be cliche af and say “I love you, but I love me more”.

I was starting to believe in and create the life I wanted for myself and that included healthy love and he was not embodying that so I started to finally believe that I could let him go, for good. Because I knew what I deserved.

Once again 3 months passed, and so did my dog and it turns out he was the first place I wanted to be.

This is what is was that kept me going back. A feeling, a refuge, comfort and hope. He was an escape for me, being with him felt like home. A feeling I cant describe because logically it makes absolutely no sense.

I never truly felt like I could be my complete self with him. We didn’t do family or friends things together, it was just us in our own little world and perhaps that is all it was ever meant to be. But it felt good when we were together.

This time I felt like I could finally give him and our relationship my all, one last time and he resolved to do so too.

We started spending real quality time together, him, his daughter and I. I felt myself falling again. Letting my guard down, opening up to the possibility of this being my life, of spending a life together, of having a family and a home.

There is no doubt that I loved what we shared, our wit, our humour our unrelenting chemistry that seemed to defy all odds. Oh the chemistry, there is nothing like it. Maybe it is this chemical bond that makes letting go so damn hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite all of that and all I believed we were conquering and accomplishing , deep down I guess he wasn’t on the same wavelength.

After a particularly difficult evening together and an open conversation about how I felt, with no reciprocation from him I went home feeling uneasy and yet unaware of the unrest in his heart.

That night he sent me a message about his concern for our relationship and my needs and my inability to accept his busy lifestyle and while his concerns in that moment may have been valid they were not encompassing the big picture, my efforts felt lost.

The truth was, he was having doubts far beyond anything I could have ever done to change them including jumping off of a bridge into hot burning lava, spikes and alligators just to prove my devotion to him, his lifestyle and his child.

And that is when he said the words I would never come back from.

There is a lot you can fight for in a relationship, there are broken things you can fix all the time, there are differences you can reconcile, there are habits you can change, dislikes you can live with, sex you can spice up, schedules you can work around, distance you can conquer but none of this, NONE of it will ever matter or work if you are missing a key ingredient.

He sent a text that perhaps felt worse than the very first one he did or did not mean to send to me. Yes, we had all of our serious conversations over text because he was unable to have real life conversations about feelings. Yes, we were certainly opposites.

The words went like this:

“In our recent time together I found myself trying to love you…”trying“, I mean, shouldn’t I just know?”

*deep breath*

The response in my mind went like this:

“I have hopelessly loved you since the first moment I met you. I have traded in months and years of my life to see if this could work with you, I have said NO to other men who were willing and ready to LOVE me, I am surrounded by people who don’t need to “try” to love me, I have come back to you time and time again because I never once doubted my love for you, it has been 4 years and 7 moths since our first date and we have come a LONG way since so, YES, YES, you should have an idea of whether or not you love me, without trying.. and I am lovable, damn it! ”

Instead I graciously said

“I do believe that it is a feeling you would be more sure of by now, yes”

And then I dismissed myself.

Not before feeling the heavy blow of years of trying to make something work with someone who would ultimately tell me in so many words, they cannot love me. Not without him trying to explain him self or ask for more time. He told me he needed time to think, I assured him that thinking was not what he needed, feeling was

In that moment our very first date came flooding back to me. Since we met perhaps he had been “trying” to love what he deemed not perfect and never was I ever going to be enough for him no matter what I did.
(The conclusion to all of this will ultimately confirm this truth.)

There is no fighting feelings. If someone does not love you, you cannot make them and doing so will only further dim your own light and kill your spirit. I know because I tried it once.

I am believer in love. Real, true, deep, mad love. I believe that love can overcome, I believe that when you love someone you do whatever it takes, I believe that love overrules logic sometimes, I believe that living in love is far better than living in practicalility. I believe that life gets in the way and that there are compromises we can make, but love can never be one of them, not for me.

I couldn’t come back from that. I could no longer allow myself to remain seated at a table where love was not being served. There is not much that is more soul crushing than loving someone who admittedly cannot love you. Although it is ultimately through no fault of our own it weighs heavy on our self esteem.

So I walked away, this time certain there was no going back, our fate had been sealed, I cannot make him love me therefore I must move on.

And yet, there is one more chapter..

To be continued tomorrow.. what brought us back together and ultimately apart, forever.
Plus, I have exciting news!