I Know Our Love Is Real....And That's Good Enough For Me

I'm ready to shout it from the mountain tops...

It’s always a tricky situation when you get back together with your ex. It’s not enough to convince yourself that things have changed and are better (which is a feat in and of itself), but you also have to convince your friends and family that things have changed! I’m in the process of attempting to convince people right now; and either I’m not that convincing or they are not that forgiving. Whichever one it is, I’m failing. Therefore, they are failing to see the great MAN my ex is now, the great spiritual leader he has become and the great supporter he continues to be. They fail to see that I didn’t just slip and fall in love with him again, but that I intentionally, but helplessly, leaped into his arms and allowed him to love me and, in return, love him back.

But should I even be trying to convince anyone? Is it enough that I’m convinced that he has changed and I shouldn’t need to work to try to convince anyone else?

I need to be more confident in our love. I need to be more proud to call him my man. I need to stop feeling the need to defend our love and just working on developing our love. The thing is I’m extremely proud of him and see the potential in him; however, because I don’t feel like everyone else sees that, my declaration of love softens when I’m around other people. 

Starting today, I’m going to begin my journey of only speaking positively of our relationships. I only want to affirm our love instead of accommodate the emotions of others. Beginning today, I will stop convincing and start confirming. Confirm the fact that I’m in love, confirm the fact that he is the man I want to be with, confirm the fact that our love is real!

Finally on One Accord

Here it comes…we both knew it was coming, but we were both avoiding it. Well, we can’t avoid it any longer. We were both anxious to understand “what we were doing.” We both know that we love each other; we’ve expressed that. And I think we both know the level to which we love each other, which is immensely, completely and entirely. But we had been doing too much thinking and not enough knowing. And the only way to know something is to say it. I needed to hear the words. I needed for him to say exactly what his intentions were for our relationship. I needed to know exactly what he wanted from me. 

So this talk had to come and it had to come now….

The hairs on my arms rise as I’m listening to you talk. I feel tightness in my chest and I remember to tell myself to breathe. I take in a deep breath and with it I take in all that you are telling me. ’m diligently listening and grabbing onto every single word you are saying. I don’t want to miss anything—its important that I hear and understand everything that you are saying and are not saying. “…I love you,” he says. And I know it’s coming, the infamous “but.” My heart quickens and my stomach forms a knot as my bodies reacts in anticipation of what he is going to say. My brain knows what he is going to say is not going to be good, because it’s never good. I don’t get the fairy tale—at least I’ve never gotten it in the past. My brain uses its knowledge of the past to predict what will happen in the present. Meanwhile, my heart holds out hope, because the heart only knows happy endings. As much as the heart has been broken and bruised before, it still believes in the possibility of love…it still believes that true love exists. “…and I have always loved you,” he continues. Why is he waiting so long for the “but"? I ask myself. My body stiffens with every new phrase that comes out of his mouth, while my brain becomes impatient with his monologue. The words are nice to hear, but they aren’t telling me anything new. I thought he wanted to discuss the future. I want something more for him, from us, but clearly he’s not…

Suddenly, I’m jarred out of my train of inordinate thoughts by the foreign words that are coming out of his mouth. “…Brooke, I will always love you. I want to love you and be with you forever. I see you as my wife and I want to spend this next year making sure that vision comes true.” 

I exhale and breathe an emphatic “I love you too!” I love him too. I want to be with him too! I want to marry him too! My brain and my heart are both overwhelmed—my brain is overwhelmed with information that it needs to process while my heart is overwhelmed with immense joy and expectation. Our love is finally united! 

A piece of you was dwelling in my heart and a piece of me was dwelling in yours. So when love finally brought us together, my heart leapt out of me to be reunited with the piece of me that was with you. 

I needed to know what he wanted…I learned that it was Me!

Prelude to "The Talk"

As a couple becomes more attached to each other, I find that they are also more sensitive to things. They are more easily excited and more easily affected, but they are also more easily annoyed and more easily angered…

…We both know something is wrong, but neither one of us is saying anything.  Both of us think we are good actors—nominees for the Academy Awards, but we are both delusional, because we aren’t fooling anyone. And we definitely aren’t fooling each other. It’s impossible for us to hide things from each other; we can try to put on a performance—change our tone of voice, act nonchalant, change the subject—but we both know the show only lasts so long. It’s exhausting to put on a mask, act a certain way that is not the authentic you. So we avoid each other. We make up reasons why we can’t talk or why we have to get off the phone:   

“Um…I have to get up early in the morning, so I need to go.” (But its only 8 o'clock at night; clearly, I could risk staying awake for another hour or so. 

“OK,” he says. “That’s cool... is everything OK”? (There it is….the question that always leads to a discussion of some sort. Whether it be now or tomorrow or later in the week, that question always precludes a debate.) 

Not quite ready for that debate yet, I answer, “Yep, everything is OK.”   

Clearly, we both know that is not the truth, but we both go with it, because we are both exhausted and aren’t really up to a “discussion” tonight…

So we went to bed. We tried to avoid the situation. Why—Because we didn’t want to argue. Since we are more sensitive to things, something that starts out as a minor annoyance can turn into a major argument about the status of our relationship and where we stand and what’s next for us. This is a conversation that at least one or both of us wants and needs to have, but are waiting for the right moment. To be honest, what’s really behind the sensitivity and the anger and the discontentment is care. These emotions are evidence that we care about each other and care about our futures together. If we didn’t care, the minor things that we do to each other would also not matter. 

These things affect us because the care that we have for each other is strong and hopefully lasting…so that night we avoided the talk, but I’m sure it’s coming soon…

A Healthy Dependence?

I’m beginning to become dependent on him again and that scares me. I’m not dependent on him for the everyday functional things like eating, bathing and breathing, but I’m dependent on him emotionally. For instance, I can always tell if he and I have an argument before we go to sleep or don’t get a chance to talk before we go to sleep, because I wake up moody, bothered and dissatisfied. But if he and I have a good conversation before we go to bed, then I wake up happy, restful and refreshed. 

My emotional disposition is beginning to be controlled by the status of our relationship—dangerous territory! However, I’m not quite sure how one avoids that.If I force myself to not become emotionally dependent upon him, then I end up not becoming emotionally involved at all and put a wall up.  However, if I allow myself to go all in and give in to love, then I leave myself exposed to getting hurt…

There is no easy answer, and there is no middle ground. I must pick one or the other—I either have to love completely and risk hurting completely OR I have to love superficially and risk not having someone to love at all. I’m obviously going to pick the former option but only because I’ve tried the other option and it didn’t take me far.  I’m tired of holding back, I’m tired of having reservations, I’m tired of caring what other people say/think about my relationship. I need to be fair to “us” and give all of me. And I hope that he is doing the same. 

So maybe I should look at this differently…maybe it’s a positive thing that I’m beginning to become dependent on him emotionally, because it’s evidence of the fact that I’ve finally let myself be vulnerable and defenseless (which you all know I’ve been struggling with for some time now!). I’m growing!

The “old” me was looking at this situation negatively—trying to sabotage the situation and convince myself that I should never be “dependent” upon a man.  Well, that’s true to some extent, but I also need to be emotionally tied and connected with him in some tangible way in order to realize the capacity of our love!

I’m beginning to become dependent on him again, and that comforts me!

No Question About It... This Is Love

I love him. I do. I love him with a love that I feel within my body, within my soul, within my heart. It’s crazy how much I love this man. But what’s even more extraordinary is that he loves me! I know he loves me—not because he told me, but because he didn’t have to tell me. I feel it. I feel it within my being that he truly wants to be with me and truly adores me. The feel of his love is so strong, so heavy, so lasting that I literally felt the moment it happened. 

I literally felt the moment he let himself love me fully and completely…

I let him in. I finally let him in to my world—my thoughts,  my feelings, my heart.  I let him see all of me—past, present and future. I needed him to see me. I needed him to know all of me and not just the “me” I choose to show people in the moment. So I gave him a magic wand, the secret into the window of my life.  Like the enchanted mirror Beast gave Belle, I was able to give him a secret key that unlocks the shield around my life, my heart. I was able to give him access to me through my writing. 

Through my writing he was able to see me when I was a teenager and trying to understand love. Through my writing he was able to see me as a college student searching for a man to love. Through my writing he was able to see me as a young adult trying to figure out how to love. I read to him excerpts from my journey and he got it. He finally got me. He finally understood that I’m not selfish, I’m scared. I’m not callous, I’m cautious. I’m not indignant, I’m insecure.   

As I’m reading him the story of him, I feel his love radiating through the phone.  In that moment, I changed from his helper to his partner, from his lover to his mate, from his girlfriend to his future wife. In that moment, he understood that my shield wasn’t about him; it was about me and my insecurities. Once I showed him that, I felt his love radiate fully; which, in turn, melted away my insecurities—in an instant…

I’ve never felt love from a man the way he has been pouring out his love. I truly feel blessed to have a love like this!