REAL LOVE DOESN'T HURT: Finding Love (For the First Time) at Age 42

My favourite picture from our wedding day. Photo Credit: Alberto Ponce Photography

With Valentine's Day looming ahead, I'm reflecting on love and my past relationships.

I got married last fall to a truly wonderful man, but before meeting him, every relationship had been a literal dumpster fire.

This was evidenced by the fact that every time I was in a relationship, I lost a lot of weight.

Why?

Because my stomach was always so wound-up in knots I could barely eat.

Listen, it's the easiest weight-loss plan ever; get into an unhealthy relationship with an emotionally unavailable person, live in constant fear and doubt - so that you truly cannot think about eating - and then lose 10-pounds in three months.

I've felt that knot of doubt / fear / uncertainty in every relationship I've been in.

It wasn't until I met my now husband that I realized I had always felt that doubt in the past because it hadn't really been love.

Growing up, love from my family - and my father specifically - felt bad (aka physical and mental abuse), so I thought that love always had that underlying gnawing doubt / fear / uncertainty.

I thought that being in any kind of relationship with someone meant having to remain vigilant to my behaviour in case I did something to displease them and they withdrew their love.

(No, my childhood wasn't much fun. When people talk about how care-free they were as kids, I envy them because I cannot relate.)

I always had to make sure I was and did what the other person wanted; first my parents, and then... well everyone else.

Which of course is why I lived in constant fear in my relationships, and why I lost weight every time.

(It was consistently 10-pounds in three months, to be gained back once the relationship was over and I was once again able to eat.)

It's also why I always lost myself.

When my relationships ended, I was always thin, and I was lost.

(But because of how lost I felt, I couldn't even enjoy the thin-ness I had so coveted.)

"What do I do now that I'm not constantly thinking about and mentally managing this relationship?"

But I also felt relieved.

Because I could finally ask myself again what I wanted, and not focus on whatever the other person wanted.

Why did I always get involved with emotionally unavailable guys?

My parents were emotionally unavailable so this was familiar - that feeling of chasing love and trying to convince the other person to stay, to be there, to be present.

I thought this was how every relationship would feel - the constant fear, the knot in my stomach.

Real love feels safe. Photo by Lawrence Makoona on Unsplash

It was them... but it was me.

I got involved with emotionally unavailable guys because it's what I knew from my family.

And also because I was emotionally unavailable.

I didn't really want to meet a "forever" person because I thought that every relationship felt bad, and would have me emotionally steam-rolling myself in favour of the other person. 

I wanted no part of that long-term, let alone a lifetime.

So the guys I attracted were emotionally unavailable a-holes.

I didn't want someone who would tie me down forever while absolutely destroying my peace of mind and sense of self, because that's what "happened" to my mother. (She told me on more than one occasion that her marriage to my father was her "bad karma from a previous life" - because obviously nowhere along the way did she have a choice in the matter, so she had to stay and suffer through it. They've been unhappily married now for over 50 years. )

So it was the guys.

But it was me.

Because I had an unhealthy view of relationships and what I thought they were "doomed" to be, I wanted to make sure that whoever I met wouldn't stay.

I also didn't want to baby-sit someone and manage their life. 

I knew I didn't want to have children so the thought of having a man who was the equivalent of having a child - who needed me to organize him and his life AND remind him to take out the trash - well I wanted no part of it.

(The amount of man-children I met and dated...!)

So... I always looked for someone who had one foot-out the door right from the start.

I didn't know this consciously of course, but subconsciously this was what I was looking for. I can only recognize that now, standing here with a much-healed heart and a healthier mindset.

In order to open the door to meeting my now husband, I had to let go of my family - because you can't set a standard in one area of your life for how you want to be treated - aka RAISING THE BAR - and then accept less than that in another area - aka LOWERING THE BAR.

I raised the standards for what I expected from my relationships and allowed those who couldn't meet that standard to fall away.

And then I allowed myself to believe it was possible.

I changed my mindset from "It seems impossible" to "There must someone as weird and wonderful as me."

I went from thinking it was unlikely for me to meet someone, to thinking it was unlikely that I wouldn't because I was pretty wonderful.

Real love feels safe. Photo by Hari Nandakumar on Unsplash

Yeah, that's the other thing.

I started to think well of myself, and to see how much I had to offer.

It turns out you need to fall in love with yourself - or at the very least like yourself a whole bunch - before you can truly fall in love with anyone else.

Falling in love with my husband wasn't an easy road in that - because of the hurts and resulting fears and doubts from past relationships - it took me a while to let my guard down.

I would be gripped by fear because of something he said that I was reading far too much into but instead of sitting on my fears as I had in past relationships, I decided to voice them.

I wanted to be myself - to bare myself - and this man was either going to love me for it or not.

And he did.

No matter when it was, if I said I needed, him, he was there.

Sometimes I would call him in a panic, and he would stop whatever he was doing to talk to me.

He had dealt with anxiety in the past and recognized it in me, and it didn't scare him. He stayed and held my hand through it.

There was even a time when he dropped everything mid-workout to drive half-way across the city to come reassure me. And he had a football game that night with a friend, which he canceled because he said I was more important.

From our second date, he was dedicated to me and to us, and to doing what he needed to in order to ensure I was ok, and that we were ok.

My husband is not a fickle man, and I saw that from the start. He will change his mind if given a very good reason, but if no reason is given, once he makes up his mind about something or someone, that's what it is.

I'm the same.

And that's how and why we got engaged after six-months, and married a year after that.

We both knew what we had found in each other, and since we were both in our forties - and neither of us had ever been married  - we saw no reason to wait.

Now I know that real love isn't supposed to hurt, isn't supposed to make your stomach feel so tangled in knots that you can't eat.

Real love makes you feel relaxed, and has no afterthought, no doubt, no fear.

And if there is fear or doubt, you talk about it until it dissolves.

That's real love.

Real love feels safe. Photo by Maurits Bausenhart on Unsplash

How my husband says I love you:

• He will leave the last spoon of tartar sauce in the bowl as long as I still have fish on my plate in case I want it. When I finish my last bite, only then will he take the last spoon.

• He video-calls me from the grocery store to show me what the options are if what I put on the list isn't there.

• He always asks me if I want anything for breakfast, and then makes it and brings it to me in our home office (on the days I'm working from home).

• He empties the trash, washes the bedding, and does the groceries without needing to be reminded because it matters to him to contribute to our life together.

He's a grown man who's capable of organizing his life. I feel like I have an actual partner.

I thought being in a relationship meant being with someone who would detract from my life, who would be a burden. But it turns out that a real partner is someone who adds to my life and makes it better and easier in a lot of ways.

It took me 41 years to believe I was awesome, and then it took me one year to meet my now husband after I started believing it.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

- Rumi

Real love feels safe. Photo by abdullah ali on Unsplash

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You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.

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