Borrowed Stages Of Love

Borrowed Stages Of Love

The Thoughts Warrior Life's Lessons

I am borrowing this one, do not know the author. Saw it on Facebook, but will expand with my own thoughts.

We only fall in love with 3 people in our lifetime-each one is for a specific reason.

Often our first is when we are young. In high school even. It’s the idealistic life-like the fairytales re-read as children.

This is the love that appeals to what we should be doing for society’s sake-and probably our families. We enter into it with the belief that this will be our only love and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel quite right or if we find ourselves having to swallow down our personal truths to make it work because deep down we believe that is what love is supposed to be.

The second is supposed to be the hard love-the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved. This is the kind of love that hurts, whether through lies, pain, or manipulation.

We think we are making different choices than our first, but in reality, we are still making choices out of the need to learn lessons-but we hang on. Our second love can be a cycle, oftentimes one we keep repeating because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time try, it somehow ends worse than before.

Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced, or narcissistic even. There may be emotional, mental, or even physical abuse or manipulation. Most likely there will be high levels of drama. This is exactly what keeps us addicted to this storyline because it’s the emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows and like an emotional junkie trying to get a fix, we stick through the lows with the expectation of the high.

Yes, first love, I remember it well.

There were actually two. One in High School and one in college. The ones where I wanted the big fancy wedding, little house, yard, 2 kids, and a dog. Lol Parent approved. All these years later, knowing myself as I do now, I can see the idealistic nature of this. Society tells young people this is wonderful, this is what life should be. I actually had the opportunity 34 years later to revisit (date) one of these first loves. Imagine having closure to what could have been.

We went into the relationship more mature, more experienced, and maybe a tiny bit determined to give it a good shot. Sadly, it did not pan out. Both of us were too broken by the 2nd type of love. He was not able to move on and heal, but he said to me. You are ready than you think, you deserve to find someone who will love you the way you deserve to be loved.

The second is pretty self-explanatory. We have all been in relationships where we give so much of ourselves and are constantly beaten back. Fear of failure? Still, believing we can change a person’s behavior? We all rationalize and justify it in our own way. The results are usually the same. Pain, heartache, and lots of counseling and self-reflection.

And the third is the love we never see coming. The one that usually looks all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be. This is the love that comes so easy it doesn’t seem possible. It’s the kind where the connection can’t be explained and knocks us off our feet because we never planned for it.
This is the love where we come together with someone and it just fits-there isn’t any ideal expectations about how each person should be acting, nor is there pressure to become someone other than we are.

Can we get there? Yes, it’s possible. It comes after soul searching and an acceptance that you are worthy of being loved. Not entitled, but worthy.

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