Oops! I missed a week. Time eluded me and creativity was directed toward lots of small obligations that pulled me away from my precious NO SMALL TALK. Thanks for your patience! Hopefully, it won’t happen again, but it probably will. I just promise not to make it a habit. Now for the topic at hand…
I used to write a lot about love before I’d fallen into non-toxic love. I specify non-toxic love because toxic love is the only type of love I’d been in before. I didn’t know it was toxic the entire time but I definitely would find out somewhere near the end and always in hindsight. All of what I wrote was based on what I knew about that and what I hoped the future to be. Now that I’m on the path to get married next year I feel inspired to reflect on these earlier musings of what love would have in store for me.
And just so we are on the same page, I’m talking romantic love today. I will dive deeper into other types of love I’m sure over time. I have so much to say about all types of love we can have in our lives and it all deserves to be explored in earnest.
The thing is before I found my person, I pined for them. I searched high and low. I settled, I lost, I sometimes won but mostly I was put to the side more times than I can count. It’s just not easy dating as a black, queer, thicc, femme. Read any of the research. On top of that, I was born with an almost unquenchable thirst for romance combined with a very specific religious upbringing that brainwashed me into thinking there was a mold you had to fit in to be loved. That combination is a surefire road to low self-esteem. I was getting all my ideas from romance from the media and what I wasn’t getting from the media I was getting from a white man with a bible in his hands.
So imagine a lack of representation and an impossible expectation. It was as you can imagine a mindfuck. I saw love as only attainable through a rigorous overhaul of who I was. It was only when I would somehow morph into a small yet sexy yet pure white woman that I would be worthy of love. The joke was on me cause that morph still hasn’t happened and I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. And all jokes aside, I’m so glad that type of morphing isn’t in my future. And it saddens me that the thought was part of my past. Also quick sidebar: I have never wanted to be white. Have to put that out there before some white person comes to me with some wild shit to say because of that line.
I digress…back to the topic.
The media bombarded me with the image I described so I internalized that image as the archetype. The ideal and the one most deserving of love. Once you attain this, you attain romantic love. And only through romantic love can you truly be whole… also a whole damn lie but that’s a blog for another time too.
With all this marinating in my brain when I pictured being in love it was always off. Hell, when I fell in love in the past it was off AF because of these messages. My fantasies and relationships oscillated between unsustainable passion and outlandish outpourings of self only to receive nothing in return. I imagined myself as a part of someone’s world and never a melding of worlds. It was me fitting into someone else’s perfect picture of their life. No questions asked of it was my perfect life.
Because of all this, the love I wrote about in my 20s was shallow. It was based on a fantasy that even I couldn’t achieve. Here’s an excerpt from an article1 I wrote in my younger years about love:
There are times when I close my eyes and envision my ideal partnership. In my dream, I wake up in the morning and they’re already awake, reading a book on the windowsill, and the coffee they brewed is still warm. I walk over to them sitting on the windowsill, I kiss them on the side of the neck and say nothing else to not interrupt their reading. I saunter into the kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, go plop down in my chair and open up my reading. My person puts their book down and I feel their eyes on me from across the room. They come close, take the laptop out of my hand, kiss me. Then we have sex for a polite, passionate 45 minutes. We cum together, followed by them saying, “Wanna go get breakfast?”
This cracks me up for a number of reasons. One… the drama! Two… I don’t even read like that. Not in the morning anyway and barely in the evening. I’m a slow reader and an audiobook boy! I’ve never once read in the morning unless you count doom-scrolling on multiple apps at a time. I also think morning sex is overrated. Your breath stinks, your stomach is unsettled, and the brain is only functioning at a quarter of its capacity. Needless to say, in my fantasy, I was a person I am not.
It wasn’t until my Saturn Return did I make the obvious discovery that love would only happen at the corner of self-discovery and self-love and not a moment sooner. It was still a couple more years until I’d get there. And to be completely honest, I often walk away from the corner of self-love only to find myself withdrawn, sad, lonely and needing to find my way back. Talk about an even less linear path than love with another person… self-love. UGH! perhaps another blog.
I had some right inklings. I knew the person I was meant to be with would have emotional fortitude and a sense of humor. The other thing I knew is that it would, at the end of the day, be grounded in a solid friendship. Cause these things were all necessary after the situationships I’d been in.
Now that I’m in love and have chosen the person I want to take on life with I have a new clarity of what love is like. I do think love is uniquely tailored to the people who’ve decided to participate in it together. That being said, I’m now practicing love every day and it looks totally different from my fantasy. For one, we never read together in the morning. But in all seriousness here are 2 quick lessons on love I’ve learned now at 35.
1. Melding your worlds is necessary but not easy
It can’t just be one person’s perfect scenario, it’s better described as two imperfect plots coming together. With lots of twists and turns. When my partner and I met we were individually in totally different eras than we are now. And our lives colliding felt more like we fucked with moldavite. (A crystal that’s said to bring about swift transitions that aren’t easy.) I was suddenly dealing with trauma so deep I’d cry at random moments and he was dealing with extreme burnout working in a nepotistic construction company. We both left our jobs, not both of us by choice. We then both decided to pursue career changes. Oh and then a little pandemic hit. Needless to say, if we had known what our future held when we started dating in 2019, I don’t know if we would have dated at all. Actually, we would’ve cause it always felt worth the risk, and the reward from all this has been extraordinary.
But I say all this to say, when we combined our lives it wasn’t straightforward. It was messy. Both adults with real grown-ass issues. We brought with us our baggage and unpacked it into a home we now build and work on together. The transitions of life continue to happen and we are better for it. There’s this quote from one of my favorite shows, The Good Place that encapsulates it perfectly. It says, “If soulmates do exist, they’re not found. They’re made. People meet, they get a good feeling, and then they get to work building a relationship.”
2. It’s not always exciting
And the ugly truth lesson… it’s not always exciting. Sure you have times when things are wild and life is throwing you curveballs. Or times when passions are high and you can’t get enough of each other. And then there are times when things are just chill. Stable. And stability can be, well, boring.
Then it’s reminding yourself that boring doesn’t mean bad, or that another shoe is about to drop. I’ve been terrified in the early moments of stability that another big, motherfucking shoe is gonna drop. I’ve had to remind myself that sometimes love can be uncomplicated. That harmony can be quiet. And that these times are meant to be savored cause the other types of times will inevitably happen again.
This little essay isn’t to say that I somehow know everything there is to know about love at this time. To be honest, I haven’t finished bell hooks’ All About Love so I know there’s more to learn. Regardless, I’m glad I know what I know about love now that I didn’t know when I was in my 20s. And I’m thrilled and waiting with great anticipation for what I will continue to learn about love as I age and grow.
And I hope you’ve had your own reflections about love. Giving your younger self credit for leading you here and giving your current self credit for what you know now.
Maybe one day I will post this article for paid subscribers 🤫