Painful But Necessary

I don't believe it's possible to love without feeling pain. It's not because love is pain, but because love is always accompanied by pain. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that love is necessarily preceded by pain. In my personal experience, the few times I realized I was in love it was because I was in pain. I realized that I was hurting because of her, for whatever reason, and it was because I was in love with her.

The pain isn't a result of her trying to hurt me, but because her actions, her words or the situations she found herself in that I witnessed made me feel hurt, I had to accept that I deeply cared about her. We know we are in love when the other person can hurt us without trying. People always say you know you're in love when a person makes you happier than you thought you could possibly be – and I believe that to be true. However, being in love and realizing that you've just fallen in love are two different things. Accepting that you are in love is usually the most difficult part. Unless of course, you're one of those individuals who “falls in love” biweekly. These sort of people don't count because they don't understand what love truly is.

For the rest of us who fall in love regularly, no more than a handful of times, accepting that we are in love can be difficult. It's much easier the first time around, but the second, third or fourth time can get much harder. In fact, it gets more difficult to accept you've fallen in love each consecutive instance. Why? Because it almost definitely didn't end well the last time. Even if it ended well, the experience itself was painful. No matter which stage of a loving relationship you consider, each stage brings with it intense, and sometimes overwhelming, emotion.

Coming to accept that you've fallen in love is always preceded by pain, even if only by the pain of wanting someone you don't have. Being in love, with all the wanting, needing, and missing, is a sort of pain in its own regard. Assuming we aren't too experienced with love and relationships, then comes massive confusion during the comfortable period. Wondering if we're still in love or if the love has faded is also very painful. Finally, for the majority of loving relationships, there comes the breakup, incredibly painful and emotionally damaging.

After all of that fun stuff comes one of two things: peace or agony. We either accept that we lost the person we loved and move on with our lives, or we find ourselves unable to let go and instead live in the shadow of that relationship. Some are able to make clean breaks while others are fated to yearn, but to never again touch. It should come as no surprise that so many refuse to allow themselves to fall in love again. They're likely still hurting from the last love, not being too eager to go through the whole process again.

Being in love doesn't make you crazy. You have to already be crazy to allow yourself to fall in love, especially if it isn't the first time around. Only an insane person would voluntarily sign up for so much pain, so much sadness, so much voluntary madness. We would probably all be better off if we never allowed ourselves to fall in love, and pretend as if we have no heart at all. The only guaranteed way not to get your heart broken may be to act like you don't have one, but that is no way to live. I don't actually believe that, but the truth is, all that pain you experience, all those difficult times you have to face and deal with, all of it is necessary.

It's necessary for you to learn and to grow as an individual. It's necessary to feel the pain of love in order to understand the meaning of loss. Most importantly, you need the pain of love in order to love. Without the pain, without the needs and urges, love wouldn't be the miracle that it is. Without pain, happiness doesn't exist. You need to hurt when you are in love in order for you to understand how much you need the other person. You have to feel pain because through pain, human beings learn basic behaviorism.

We hurt, and by hurting, we understand we need that person in order to stop from hurting. We need the person we love in order for us to feel at peace, to feel safe, to feel like we're home. As long as you have a heart, as long as you have that basic emotional need to find and spend your life with a partner, you not only are risking the chance of getting hurt, it is almost with absolute certainty that hurt comes with it. 

The only thing we can do is find the person who will hurt us the least...

Good Things Can Happen in Sixty Days

Does this story sound familiar to you? There is a man you dated briefly years ago, and due to some personal issues, it just didn’t work out. You remained friends and you kept in touch. You end up bumping into each other on a trip. You fooled around a little bit. He wanted more, you wanted more, but you were confused by the whole thing. You were wondering why it took so long to reconnect, so you ask him "what is this?"

You want to know what "this" is. There never has been an "us" but you want to know what "us" is. You liked him for all these years, and you thought about him over and over again in the back of your mind, so of course when you finally had the opportunity to be with him again, you wanted to define "us". There is no "us". He says, "we’re fine, let’s just see where it goes." What does that mean? How many times have you heard that? You meet a man, went out a couple of times, and you want "us" to be defined. He tells you "let’s just see where it goes" but it drives you nuts. It makes you crazy because you really want to know, and you want the relationship to be defined. The feelings and the words of "let’s just see where it goes" make you an insecure, neurotic mess. I understand that.

You want something special with a man. You want him to say that he wants to be with you, just like the perfect movie you’ve watched. You want him to say that he is falling in love with you, that he wants to have a relationship with you, that he wants you to be his girlfriend. Whatever the version of the sentence is, whatever story is circulating in your brain, "let's just see where it goes" is not the answer you wanted to hear. There’s nothing definitive about that. What is that? What does it really mean? It means exactly what it says, "let’s just see where it goes."

What a man is looking for at that moment is for you to go with it, be cool, go with the flow and see what happens. Men are just wired that way. As we get older, we’re looking for that same relationship we had that was simple and easy back when we were in our early 30’s. We’re not looking for drama. We’re looking for somebody who is simple and easy, so the phrase "let’s just see where it goes" is exactly what it means. It means that you can’t put a timetable on it, but because of your life experiences, you need to have an answer. You need to define it.

Trust me, I’m not making fun of you. It’s just the way some people are wired. It’s hard to get into the mode of let’s just see where it goes. You need to give yourself what I call a "cool girl timeline." Sixty days, just commit sixty days to being open to exactly what is happening. Be present in the moment, and see where it goes. Be fun and be light about things. Give yourself sixty days to not be heavy, not to define anything and allow it to be whatever it is going to be.

At the end of the sixty day period, if you want a definition, you can certainly ask him. You’ve been on your best behavior. You’ve allowed him to get to know you, and he has seen for himself the amazingness of you. If women started doing this, men will respond in return. I know a lot of you want a long-term committed relationship, and I understand that, but if you can commit to sixty simple days of "let’s just see where it goes", then you’ll be able to see where it goes. If it is not going where you want it to go, all you’ve done is give him sixty days of your life.

Simple...