My heart is broken -- and I couldn't be happier

I think infatuation and lust at first sight are more common than love at first sight, but I definitely believe love at first sight, or at least very early on, can be a thing that happens. All I have to do to reinforce that opinion for myself is look at the picture of Hubby and me gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, as though each of us was the most precious, amazing thing the other had ever seen. A picture which was taken half an hour after we introduced ourselves to each other for the first time. We knew before the first month of our relationship was out that we would eventually combine households and continue moving up the "relationship escalator," and everyone who was at the party where we met has told me they knew that night that he and I were in it for the long haul.

With Woody, it wasn't quite that fast, but we transitioned from friendship to relationship after only about three weeks, and it was only two or three weeks after that that he said he loved me. Took me a bit longer to allow myself to love him, because I was still hurting from the end of my previous relationship, but I said "I love you" to him about a week or so after the first time he said it to me, and acknowledged to both of us that I'd fallen in love with him (for me, "love" and "in love" aren't quite the same thing) about three weeks after that.
 
Well, I am not anti-love at first sight. I just think it's rare, and must be based on more than sex and drugs.

When I met miss pixi seven years ago, we had been chatting on okc for a couple weeks. So I knew we had so much in common besides sex. And when we did meet, that was confirmed. We shared similar sex kinks, yes, but also we had similar tastes in movies, TV shows, books, music (but different enough we were always introducing each other to new things), cooking, hiking, camping, canoeing, loving animals and children, politics, spirituality, home decorating, fashion, thrift store shopping, going to museums, cuddling non-sexually. The list goes on... We even had similar (chosen) first names, and identical middle names, and each had one sibling, who also had the same name! And we are both Leos.

The romance was intense. I recall a stormy summer evening when we sat at her kitchen table sharing a pizza with the window open and the rain and thunder serenading us... Something so simple, yet it was magical.

So, yeah, I did tell her I loved her after six weeks. And it turned out we were in it for the long haul. But we didn't move in together for 3 years, just to be sure!

I sometimes feel I want to tell Punk I love him. We've been together 5 months and see each other twice a week! We have such a great time. Have, from the start. But I hold back from saying the "love" word. And so has he. Sometimes when he takes his leave, I feel those words hanging in the air between us, just barely unspoken...

My last "love" (with Ginger) turned out that I was loving a facade, a narcissist who pretended to be what I wanted. That is my biggest burn of recent years, and sadly has taught me to be more cautious before declaring love.
 
It's not that, AJM. It's just that calling it "love" when all you mention is her looks, her sex and her ability to party like a rock star... Is it really love? I mean, you obviously didn't share life goals. You didn't talk about having interests in common other than sex and drugs.

Sure, it was a great time. You knew it was time limited, so why the heartbreak?.

Because we had great chemistry and we recognized something special in each other. I didn't want to write a book about all of our shared interests or everything else we did. I kept it to the exciting highlights.

If she was poly I'd be in a permanent V or triad now. If I was single I'd go mono for this woman. I would never had ended my relationship with her. Period.
 
I sometimes feel I want to tell Punk I love him. We've been together 5 months and see each other twice a week! We have such a great time. Have, from the start. But I hold back from saying the "love" word. And so has he. Sometimes when he takes his leave, I feel those words hanging in the air between us, just barely unspoken....

So you don't hold back love, you just hold back from saying the words. I get it. I'm the same.
 
So you don't hold back love, you just hold back from saying the words. I get it. I'm the same.

Well, sure. I am a lover. I am just more cautious now about what I call "LOVE." But since I am polyamorous, I only have sex with people I am "fond of," to at least some extent. Sexual attraction is only part of love. Love is proven, imo, when 2 people go through some ups and downs together, showing their true mettle and character. True love will strengthen through challenging times. True love is not just that thrill you get in NRE. True love means you can have messy hair, be sad and cry openly together, supporting each other emotionally, take an interest in each other's families and friends, nurture each other when ill, etc., etc. In my opinion!
 
I'm happy in the sense that I'd do anything to ensure her happiness even at the cost of some of my own. Isn't that what REAL love is all about?

Uhm, no. That's what being a real doormat is all about. Love is give and take. People who love you don't just toss you away when you become inconvenient.

I'm much more inclined to accept that AJM knows how to interpret and understand his own unfolding experience. He hardly seems to be a "doormat"-- fer gawd's sake, he's said he is grieving a loss here.

I didn't say whether or not AJM did feel love... Only he is in a perspective to know that. I said that the act of forgoing your own happiness for the happiness of another is being a doormat. Sure, you can love someone and still be a doormat... but being a doormat doesn't prove you love someone. Some people are just raised to be doormats, and that's how they approach relationships... it doesn't mean they love any stronger or better than others, it just means they have a character flaw that they've reconciled by telling themselves it equals love.

To emphasize, I'm not sitting here in my living room trying to dictate whether someone feels love or not. Sorry Mag, but that's bullshit. You don't know his heart, you're not privy to his innermost feelings. Sure, what he feels as love is different than what you feel as love. There are at least 7,000,000,000 different perspectives of love on this planet, none of them is "right" or "wrong" and there's no such thing as the "love police" who get to decide who is and isn't in love. What I am saying is that "putting one's happiness aside for another's" is not the definition of love, and it's certainly not some pinnacle of "REAL" love. My whole point is that "love" isn't defined by a certain set of behaviours or acts. It just is what it is, and you know it when you feel it. I mean, ultimately, all emotions are biochemical reactions, and even the top neuroscientists can't sort them out... so how can some random chick on the internet claim to have that ability?? Please.

But I stand by my claim: if someone loves you, really loves you and isn't just infatuated and having a good party time... they don't just throw you away because something shinier comes along.
 
Last edited:
She moved in with you lock stock and barrel after a month? A 52 year old woman?

To be fair, my husband pretty much moved in on our first date. I was still living with my mom at the time, and he was working on the road, pretty much living out of his car. He "stayed with me" for the first 3 weeks we were together, then he had to go back on the road to do his job, but invited me up for xmas at his Mom's, then we both lived at my mom's until we got our own apartment 3 months later. That was 9 years ago, we've been married for 6 and happy as ever, so I think it's safe to say any problems we may have in the future are unrelated to our beginnings. We deliberately didn't have sex for the first month, because we recognized it was something special and we wanted to take it slow (well, aside from pretty much living together from day 1).

In our case, we both just knew this was someone special. The term soul mates sounds so hokey, but I don't know what else to call it. And yet even then, I wouldn't say it was love at first sight... we met months before we actually went on a date, he'd driven me home from the bar once where we were out with a bunch of mutual friends. He was based out of another province and only came to town a few days a month, sometimes we'd cross paths... but we started chatting online and I invited him to come over one day when I knew he was in town. He insisted on a formal date first, but afterwards he came over and basically never left.

I fully appreciate that this is the exception not the rule, but it does always make me hesitant to come down too hard on people who move "too fast." I agree with Mag that 99% of the time, it's a terrible idea. People hear stories like mine and KC and think it's something that happens every day. It's not. It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, and people who make a habit of it tend to have track records of painful breakups. But that's passion for you, passion from beginning to end, and passion can be addictive. So whatever. If it makes them happy, who cares?
 
Last edited:
I fully appreciate that this is the exception not the rule, but it does always make me hesitant to come down too hard on people who move "too fast." I agree with Mag that 99% of the time, it's a terrible idea. People hear stories like mine and KC and think it's something that happens every day. It's not.

It's always a little embarrassing to admit it, but the same dern thing (more-or-less) happened between me and my partner of twenty years. I was on the road, traveling (Greyhound) with a light backpack and little money, not knowing where I'd land ..., having left my former home behind. I had almost nothing, was more-or-less a homeless vagabond.

A friend of my partner brought me to his tiny apartment to introduce us and have us all hang out together. Honestly, being on the road and without much by way of resources, I had the literal stink of poverty and homelessness upon me.

He let me clean up in his shower and stay the night in his tiny home that very night. (I was rather a mess in those days, having had my whole life fall apart.) None of us ever thought we'd be hanging out more than a few days or something. (We had met previously, bud didn't really know one another.)

But I stayed, day after day... and now it's twenty years later, and we've become profoundly loving toward one another; and it's one of the best things that ever happened to either of us.

True story.
 
Last edited:
The exceptions that prove the rule.
 
Sweet. This is love.

Yeah. I'm so freaking blessed -- and lucky!

We're pretty regular people. We have our challenges and difficulties together. But we're exceptionally good friends. That's the important part.

He's so incredibly loving and kind! Well, 95% of the time he is. He's way better at that than I am. I'm difficult. And damned lucky. He's mostly patient with me. I try to be kind most of the time, but I have a built in difficult-ness. Sigh.
 
...
I fully appreciate that this is the exception not the rule, but it does always make me hesitant to come down too hard on people who move "too fast." I agree with Mag that 99% of the time, it's a terrible idea. People hear stories like mine and KC and think it's something that happens every day. It's not. It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, and people who make a habit of it tend to have track records of painful breakups. But that's passion for you, passion from beginning to end, and passion can be addictive. So whatever. If it makes them happy, who cares?

I am one of the one's who is slow to use the "L" word (18 months with MrS, 9 months with Dude), but have basically moved "too fast" in each of my (two, all both) serious relationships in terms of co-habitation. (A "twice-in-a-lifetime" kind of thing...19 years apart!?) Don't know about painful breakups, never had one :rolleyes:.
 
I married my ex-husband just 5-1/2 months after we had our first date. He had already moved in at 3 months. We first said we loved each other at 2 weeks into our relationship. I love easily but nothing with anyone else had ever happened that quickly for me. We lasted almost 12 years, with the first 9 years being quite wonderful.

Yet, I don't think those facts prove anything and I still caution people to wait a year before living together, especially if it is a couple who already live together and they are opening up for the first time. Three or more people living together when they are just getting to know each other and are romantically involved just seems like a whole lot of drama or trouble waiting to happen.


While it was absolutely devastating when my ex and I first separated, and I did feel like a failure and ashamed when in the thick of all the trauma surrounding our split, I have since come back to myself and remembered how longevity was never the prime indicator for me of success in a relationship. There are other things more important to me now, than making something last as long as possible. I am grateful that my ex and I had the beautiful connection we had for as long as we had it. I only wish it had ended more harmoniously.

I do think that, because we in Western society are taught that we have to find "the one" and hold on for dear life, most of us are not very skilled in letting go of relationships gracefully.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top