Loving Large

If you are like me, you want to live your life full of love and happiness not a life filled with hate and regret. Loving large however means different things to different people and well, it’s scary and full of vulnerabilities! Let me tell you my story about loving. It is full of pain and growth, but let me tell you it has been worth every bit of it!

When we are young and full of hope and fantasy, love looks very different. It is rainbows and unicorns. It means that the person we love loves us back and knows EXACTLY what we need when we need it and we don’t have to express our feelings or needs at all. It is like that for so many young teenagers and even some adults. It was for me, or at least that is what I thought it was supposed to be like. I thought I was in love with my high school sweetheart and we would have the perfect life together. But as I started growing and changing because I was attending college and he wasn’t, I realized that there should be more to life and to our relationship. I was scared to voice my feelings because, well, what if I was wrong? I mean I was barely 19 after all, what did I know about life or about love? About ½ way through my first year in college he gave me an ultimatum – marry him and start a family or he would join the Army. I thought to myself, well at least he would be growing and maturing in the Army! We weren’t at war and I really thought it would do him a world of good. I told him so in not so many words. He became very moody and wouldn’t talk about it further.

Do I regret this?

My next major love was with a man several years older than me. I thought older might be better since they would have hopefully worked out their stuff and would be less likely to need a ton of reassurance of their manhood and would be less childlike. Oh boy was I wrong! This relationship never turned to marriage but did result in a business partnership (much the same as a marriage – truth be told). We both had our growing pains in our relationship and in our business. I learned a lot about myself in the process and realized that I didn’t put much stock in my own abilities and gave more than I received in my relationships. Now THAT I couldn’t blame on anyone but myself. We were together for more than 10 years. We parted ways both in business and in our personal lives. I learned a TON from that relationship about business, about life and about my own shortcomings. That might have been the most painful…looking yourself in the mirror and seeing all your vulnerabilities and owning up to them. Boy did I grow!

I then met a man who’s late wife and daughter were acquaintances of mine and he was significantly older than me. I resisted getting involved in a relationship with him for over a year, but reluctantly realized that I was falling in love with him. This love was very different than the love I had experienced before. We really talked openly about our feelings, thoughts and what really mattered in our lives. This would be a love that would nearly break me. If you have read my story, then you know that cancer took him from me. The depth of my depression after his passing was more than I thought I could bear. This relationship taught me that to experience the highest of joy you had to be vulnerable to the deepest of sorrow. To know that you loved with every ounce of your being is such a blessing. Did we each bring some of our faults into this relationship? Of course we did, we are human. But rather than run from them, we worked on them TOGETHER. No blame, no shame, just a dedication to a life full of laughter and love handling the bad times along with the good ones. I miss him deeply. I know he wants an even deeper love for me before my time here on this Earth is done.

On to the next chapter

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