Project Love: Day #27

Love Hurts
I once read somewhere that it takes only a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone. In my opinion, there is no truer statement ever made than this one. In fact, I believe that if people really understood the true meaning of love, that it is unselfish and unconditional, then more relationships and marriages wouldn’t be in the chaotic state they are today.

When my ex-husband walked out on our family five years ago, I was crushed! Crushed not because he left (because we had been struggling the six months prior to that moment), but crushed because he was so adamant about NOT going to therapy and working on our relationship. I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “I do not want to work this out. I will not go to counseling.” Looking back now, I think “hello red flag, there is another woman in the picture”, but at that point in time that was the first moment that I realized that he no longer loved me. Afterall, who would be that cruel to someone they loved? I think it hurt so much because, he had checked out of our relationship many months before that moment, and I was stuck standing there, in shock, watching my sad pathetic life pass before my eyes.

The sad part about our divorce is that it took me several years of therapy before I could see my fault in the relationship. By no means did I ever think it was all my ex-husband's fault, but I could never figure out what I had done to invoke such a harsh departure from him. I know that no matter what I had done or not done in our relationship, I never deserved to be treated the way he treated me early on in our separation/divorce. But I realize now that he was just trying to figure out a way to cope with what he was doing and get out of the relationship, in the only way he knew how, and that was to totally ignore me and my questions. Looking back now, I just wish he would have had the balls to say what it took me many years of therapy and tons of money to figure out.

I realized that as a woman, I was becoming the queen of self neglect. I didn’t have time to love myself and therefore, ended up ignoring things like my happiness, health, freedom, advancement, education and most of all my self-respect. But I did all this because I thought that’s what a good wife and mother was supposed to do. I thought we were supposed to put our kids, husbands, families and jobs before our own happiness and push through all of the pain. However, what I didn’t realize, is that I was loosing a little bit of myself day after day after day. I was so focused on being a good wife and mother that I lost myself and in the end I ended up losing the man of my dreams.

And, in my mind there is no greater pain.

Love is a Battlefield.