I remember very pointedly considering if and how I should tell my boyfriend that I loved him. When I thought about it, I was filled with, of all things, terror. The gut-wrenching, wanna puke kind of terror. Why terror? Because I knew saying those three words would forever change our relationship in one way or another. We’d either leap hand-in-hand one giant step forward or we’d never see each other again. It’s quite a dramatic step, you see, because you never tell someone you love them unless you are prepared to watch them walk away. Relationships, like everything of any significance in our lives, involve a lot of losing in hopes of gaining something else. We all go into a new relationship with miles of things stacked up to lose. Whether you lose your sensibility when your eyes first meet from across the room or you lose your cool trying not to say something incredibly stupid, you voluntarily take a risk on a complete stranger.
Remember when you first saw the love of your life? Undoubtedly you remember this moment very clearly because you felt electrified, all thanks to your fight or flight response. Whether you can map a genome or earned a doctorate from Harvard, your body still cannot distinguish between different types of stress. The chemicals adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol (not found in the beer you were drinking) rushed through your bloodstream, causing the room to shrink in on itself. You started breathing heavily. Your heart raced in your throat, choking out any chance for clever repartee. Your face flushed and your hands became clammy.
Well, you obviously didn’t make a complete idiot of yourself or your love found your ramblings endearing, so things became serious. Your relationship progressed. In one singular moment either celebrated or bemused, you lost your virginity. This is a revelation unto itself because you lost something intangible until the moment it’s gone and you realized you can never get it back. You lost your innocence.
Eventually, you lost your heart—by freely giving it away. I’m not talking about puppy love or the crush you had in grade school. I’m talking about that gut-check love when you fall hard and it knocks the wind out of you. That’s really a miracle by any definition when you think about it: falling in love. How do two people lose themselves in each other only to find something even bigger together than the sum of their parts?
Sometimes in the course of a relationship, you lose your direction, your sense of humor, or your temper. In these moments, your better half may suddenly find out things you wish were never revealed—your weaknesses, your fears and insecurities. When this person you love still loves you in spite of yourself, you find hope. You discover you have found something worth keeping—someone worth holding on to.
We’ve all reached those pivotal moments in our lives where we find out what we’re made of and how strong we really are. Those are the moments when you focus on putting one foot in front of the other knowing if you keep moving, you just might get out of Hell before the Devil even knows you’re there.
That’s what it means to be between two marriages: Finding your way without a compass. You just keep moving ahead and hold on to the faith that gave rise to your surrender in the first place: That you will be in exactly the place you are supposed to be when the right person finally finds you.
So after losing much sleep, I decided to tell someone I cared more than just a little about him. If either of us lost our lives the next day, I wanted him to know how I felt about him—that he was important to me. We’d been dating several months and were exclusive. He remembered my favorite ice cream, which I mentioned on our first date, and he drove to four stores just to surprise me with it months later. We laughed together and shared secrets with each other. Everything unfolded so naturally.
So I let those three words pass through my lips.
Without even turning to look at me, he replied, “Thank you.”
I knew in my heart that no matter how I felt, he was never really mine to lose.
