Indifference: The Common Denominator

When you long to feel for the one you’re with, it’s devastating to realize you cannot control indifference. You can only hope for a passionate future.

Picture this: “The Perfect One” walks into your life; you’re spellbound by her beauty, or he’s literally tall, dark and handsome. They're charismatic and hard-working, and they love their family. Above all else, they happen to adore you. Of course you’re smitten. How could you not be? But, it’s hard to ignore that tiny feeling you notice growing in a small corner of your heart. It’s the feeling that you don’t feel anything at all.

I’m sure you’re happy. You care about their well-being, and you enjoy the time you spend together. You may even love them as a person or as a friend, but you most certainly are not in love with them. This however, is a not a new concept. The idea of loving someone versus being in love has been explored time and time again, but this blog today goes a little deeper than that. This is about how much it can actually hurt to feel indifferent.

I guess you could say I came to this realization a little late in life. I had a few flings in high school with different women, but my first real relationship didn’t develop until I was about to begin my freshman year of college. Since that time, I've had quite the whirlwind of relationships in my life. It would be cliché to refer to them as a rollercoaster, but I’m not sure any other analogy would do it justice. The highs of love were very high (complete with selflessness and marriage), and the lows of love were very low (complete with screaming matches that woke the neighbors and the police called). Some of these relationships were also pretty unhealthy, yet I was undeniably full of feelings. Sometimes I felt my love for her radiate in my core and through every fiber of my being, and sometimes even when I hated her, it was always passionate.

One woman whom I chose to give my heart to, shattered my heart into tiny little pieces after about a year and a half. I trusted her, she cheated, and the relationship was over. My story happens all the time and is far from original, yet it was all new to me. You see, my life was that of a cheater, and after years of cleaning up my act and vowing not to be that guy again, the cheating was now being done to me and I turned into the classic receiver of what I was giving out for years. Karma, huh? After some time of mourning, I put all of my energy into moving on. I’m a pretty independent, no bullshit type of guy, so I figured I’d be “on to the next one” in no time. And boy, was I right.

You would think I'd be guarded after going through what I did. You always hear about women who get cheated on, and how they built a wall around their hearts in an attempt to prevent getting hurt again. On the contrary, I felt like I was more than ready to love and be loved again. I’m a very outgoing person, so it was always easy for me to meet new people. After a while, I found myself in a new relationship with a great woman. “That was easy,” I thought to myself. But, I was SO wrong. That relationship turned out to be one sided (mostly because someone else was on the other side of her). I wasn't used to any relationship being one sided, but I guess I got my taste of how that would feel. I soon realized the feelings of “love” I had were fading faster than they had developed. I began to feel indifferent toward what happened between us, and it genuinely upset me. She was sweet, and she cared deeply about me, but I knew in my heart of hearts that she would never treat me the way I thought I deserved to be treated. 

My last relationship about 3 years ago, wow. She was as close to perfect as I had ever known, and I convinced myself I was in love once again. We dated seriously before those familiar feelings of indifference started creeping in. They threw me off guard because I was sure this time would be different. Unfortunately, I began to feel all of the same things I had felt the previous time; only this time, I knew we were in much deeper. I knew this relationship was more serious, and I knew my lack of emotion was going to hurt someone once again. She was everything I could ask for in a person, yet I knew where things were heading.

So why could I no longer feel anything? I wasn’t unhappy, I was just flat. This upset me more than I ever would have imagined, and it was frustrating that I had little control over it. I was heartbroken because I felt heartless. My life's experiences had eventually made me "the common denominator". IT WAS ME MORE THAN IT WAS THEM, and I would've given anything to just feel something. It is undeniable that I tried. I tried my hardest to love the wonderful women who walked into my life, just as I had done the previous times, but you simply cannot force your heart to feel a certain way. Just like the other relationships that went awry, I knew I could only blame my malfunctioning feelings for the failure.

After some time, I became well aware that the first relationship I mentioned was not the person I was supposed to spend my life with, but I couldn’t help missing the real, genuine emotions I felt when I was with her. I found myself chasing those intense feelings with her again, and it was heartbreaking being unable to find them, no matter how diligently I looked. The cycle continued on for quite a while, only to feel more and more discouraged each time I felt nothing at all. I had no feelings whatsoever, just static.

I started to have a scary thought: What if Love's #1 Fan is incapable of loving someone? It wasn’t because I was guarded, or I hadn’t found the right person; maybe it was because something was wrong with me. Maybe I wasn’t meant to feel those kinds of emotions again. I desperately wanted to give love away, and these thoughts were agonizing. As someone whose heart has been broken, and has broken a few hearts, I can say with confidence that while these things are hard to deal with, it can also be devastating to want to feel something so badly that you know you cannot.

I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past few years. I’ve finally learned that people like me have to pull in the reins before getting ahead of themselves. I learned there was something wrong with me, and as "the common denominator" I had some internal flaw that prevented me from loving. My past relationships doesn't have to dictate how I treat my current or future relationships. I learned that I simply need to have patience, and so do all of you out there. It’s impossible to feel passionately about every potential partner who walks into our lives. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just reality. It just means that when I do meet “The Right One” my feelings will be anything but indifferent.

So, why do I continue to put myself out there? This type of exposure has really caused people to look at me sideways, I'm sure. I'm convinced that my relationship life (be it good, bad, or ugly) is a lesson for someone else to learn from, even when it is first a lesson for me. It's not fun in no means to lay myself on the sacrificial relationship altar and let the world observe the cutting, but a lesson is a lesson. You can call my life "preventative care" for your relationship soul...

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