A Decade and Counting

What are you looking for?

Like countless others, all I seek is a molecule shaking love that redefines everything. Simple, right? (I kid.)

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon the song heard or poet read, I have been there, once.  And that memory has ended every relationship since. The endless questions, will I find such a thing again? Will I settle, can I settle, do I want to, well #%@!, now what???

Quick shot on the here and now: I am in the beginning phases with a truly wonderful woman. And as it usually goes, these issues are always simmering but only come to the surface when someone starts to get close again...thus I decided to finally share this somewhere.

About 10 years ago (I was in my mid 20s), I had left a stable but unfulfilling relationship and started dating a girl I had been friends with for about a year. I had always been attracted to her but once we started seeing each other I fell harder and deeper than I have for anyone before or since. I cannot come close to expressing what it was actually like, the most exhilarating, intense, boundary shattering, tender moments of my life. She is still the only person I have ever even talked about marriage with. I was never so happy or vulnerable. The romance only lasted about 6 months and it ended badly, I wondered at the time if the girl I loved even existed at all, in retrospect seeming like a mix of her lies and my imagination (though that was probably just the bitterness of the moment.) She is the only person I have ever walked away from and didn't give another chance when she asked. Rough does not even begin to describe the following year, but I honestly felt like I had been able to put her behind me. And mostly that is true, she hurt me deeply enough that I had to move on for self-preservation and could not imagine trusting her again. Based on that reality, I was able to put her in my past and journey on. However, while I was able to begin to love again, I have never come close to what I felt for her. And thus I have ended every serious relationship since because they weren't the same *****-me-bare feelings. I have walked away from amazing people and great relationships because they just didn't measure up to how I once felt.

And thus, here I sit, in my mid 30s, always ending relationships because I am always looking for that "I need more oxygen" love.

Even this short paraphrase of the experience falls woefully short on telling the way of it all. …