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I’m In Love with Who I Want You to Be
There’s being in love with someone and then there’s being in love with love
At one time, if you’d asked me what was wrong with my past relationships and previous partners, I’d have listed a litany of their sins and faults: infidelity, abuse, dishonesty, and more.
But the truth? The truth is what was really wrong with those relationships and those partners was this: I was in love with love.
I was in love with the idea of being in love. Having grown up with parents who are now married for almost 45 years, grandparents who were married nearly 70 years before they passed, and a high school best friend who is still married to her high school sweetheart 26 years later, I had plenty of examples of lasting relationships and strong love.
So of course, it makes total sense that I’d want that for myself. But I wanted it so badly for myself that I was more in love with love than I was with a partner. I didn’t want a relationship with that specific partner — I just wanted a relationship and that partner happened to be convenient.
And this is where the problem is.
When you’re in love with being in love, you don’t hold out for a solid, lasting love. You scrabble to find and hold onto the first hint of love you find —…
