I loved once… Or I think I did. It’s been more than 5 years since I haven’t spoken to that person. And I still think about him. Does this mean I loved him? And if I did, I’m afraid to ask, but do I still do?
After he left the country, I started seeing someone else. It was fun for a while. We even got married and had a kid. But I never saw my ex-husband the way I saw him. Maybe all I need is closure. But you know what? I don’t know if I really want that. I don’t want to find out if he ever thinks about what we had… about we could’ve had.
Life has its flow. And we think everything must have some sort of meaning. And we keep trying to find it even if that meaning exists or not. When things get though, it is helpful to think there is a path to happiness planned for us that we just cannot see at that point in time. But does it exist? I tend to think not when I remember the moments I had with him. Why did he had to leave? Why did he denied having feelings for me when we was around me 24/7 either physically or through phone? Why did he have to move?
I genuinely believe silence is more painful than honesty. And that’s because the questions remain. At least, when someone is honest, it hurts like hell for a while, but the wounds will heal. When questions remain, it’s like getting stabbed all over again in the same wounds. It never heals.
Love is a tricky thing. You never know when it starts and when it stops. And you keep question yourself: Is it over? Or am I numbing? But then again, if it was over, the questions won’t be there. Or maybe they are there as checkpoints. But guess what? Checkpoints don’t exist when the game is over.
Aaanyways, I just had a melancholic thought and I wanted to share it with you.
Have you ever loved? Do you still do?
Love,
Elena
PS: If you enjoy my content, I will think of you while drinking my coffee. – BuyMeACoffee
My son, this blog and coffee is what keeps me alive and going while fighting alcoholism!
Short Wisdom 
i guess we feel love more deeply then men when we love or make promises we meant it there was this one guy who had promised to never leave to be there for no matter what age or time even if he got married but recently he had cut me off got engaged and said he meant those feelings at that time but not anymore i will get over him it will take time but i will fine just like he is happy without me
I agree that silence is more painful than honesty. I guess there are some exceptions to that rule, but for the most part – just tell me and let me move on. Stop with the silence and secrecy.
I don’t think it’s man vs woman. Sometimes one person in a relationship has stronger feelings than the other. Or feelings change.
Men and women do express their feelings differently, however. This could be the crux of some of the problems people face in their relationships.
But men do have feelings. re: https://adamzimmerman.me/2022/12/01/love/
I genuinely believe silence is more painful than honesty. And that’s because the questions remain. —- I agree completely with this. And that is why I always like to make things clear, and try to communicate and have my questions answered, because I too have lived with questions that what if/maybe/perhaps there is a chance, when in truth there was none. So, I believe that it’s better for each one of us to make the first step to knowing, to have our minds be free of the confusion, and be the first to suffer because, after all, we will hurt either way. Then why not make the process of healing faster? Very nice thought! I liked it.
There’s reams of papers written on how to find closure. However, in our hearts, we have a space that is always left void. It is impossible to move on. That roaring sound of ‘But, what if?’, “But, why?’ always keeps ringing in our mind. I think it is better to talk directly to that person. Our assumptions about what could have been never help.
I feel like I could have wrote this myself. It’s been many years and I still think of his a few times a month. I haven’t been able to really date anyone else and now feel as though I’ll be alone forever.
very good your article
Oh yes, I fell in love once. We broke up almost forty years ago. I married another, only to divorce 20 years later. I never loved my ex like I loved the other. The other reached out to me via Facebook about seven years ago. I ignored them, but it definitely hit a nerve! Two years ago, I answered them back. We went through a relationship via the phone and Facetime because we were 1000 miles apart. Every time we set up a meeting, I would cancel it. I recently broke it off permanently because we are no longer compatible. What they did with their life in the forty years we were apart and what I did with mine screams incompatibility. It was worth reconnecting, but it became time for me to move on.
Thank you for sharing and thank you for liking my poems.
It is really hard to lose someone you love and wonder what could have been. Is there a way you could talk to him or are you afraid to find out how he really feels about you?
Love is tricky indeed. I think I have loved two people a lot, in a way that I’m not over them yet, and the rest to a lesser degree. I actually dated a lot, trying to get over my first love, and it was a big mistake because it didn’t help and I hurt a lot of people. I hope you figure it out with the person that you love.
All the best,
Lukas.
I loved once. Or maybe I did. If I did, I won’t again. I will die alone. But not lonely.
Reblogged this on The Cliche Broken Heart Club.
I think I often confuse love with infatuation and vice versa…so in that respect I may have loved many many times or never at all.
Often when something remains incomplete or never realises its full potential we are simply left with what ifs?
Does that make it love? Or simply longing. I guess we’ll never know.
Reading this, the word that comes to my mind, which I don’t think you have written (and that’s ok), is “grief”.
I don’t know if that is indeed what you feel, but of course, I have read your words using my own experience, and that’s how I feel.
I think we often associate grief primarily with the death of loved ones.
I know grief only too well, for both the living and the dead. Though ulimately, I think it’s all grief for the loss of what was, the end of a relationship, as was.
Grief for me, is possibly the most difficult emotion to live with. I feel so unable to cope with it, that other emotions such as anxiety and anger, can feel like a relief, even as an avoidance of feeling the grief.
I don’t think it ever goes away, it can fade, or become part of who we are, but I think we have to feel it, not ignore it or avoid it, in order to heal. Writing about these things, I find, can be a powerful way of dealing with it.
A very important word you used, is “closure”, and I hear that you feel you might not want closure.
Closure doesn’t have to mean a complete end, it’s not oblivion. I think it’s change. It is feeling the sadness or even grief, to be able to know that the past is not now, and move forward but perhaps keep the past, in a special place.
It’s not necessarily closing the door.
Whatever you want to call it, love or not, may not be the most important point. You can keep whatever good feelings you had, often these are in retrospect, we’re not always aware of them at the time. Loss can reveal these things to us but these things are real just by the fact you feel them. They may not be happening now, with that person, but they are real, and an important part of your journey. They make us more alive.
It’s also sometimes ok to remember the things that weren’t so great. These can remind us of why the end, or the change happened. These things can enable us to stand aside from our old selves, and show us how we have changed, and learned, and moved on.
I don’t know if any of this really matches what you feel, and I have no expectations, but your words prompted something in me, and that’s good. So I thought I’d share my thoughts.
I think what you have written complements well what the post said. Grief is a very hard emotion to live with, especially when there is an absence of “closure.” A counselor once described the loss of a person such as in the case of this post as “ambiguous loss,” which is a term worth googling.
I read ‘I loved once’ with interest. Feelings are hard to validate and I have been in all those places. I popped by to check out your blog given you had visited mine. I wish you the best.
What if…just what if…instead of the feeling of BEING in love…that love is the essence of our being. What if we are love.
I have the same experience. I met a person more than 20 years ago, and I still think of her reserving a place for her beside every relationship I have
Its better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
i once had a gf i barely liked or that’s what i thought. she kind of was a slut so i break up with her after saying stuff like i can’t trust her anymore. cool, right? coooool. then i go back to home and suddenly it dawned on me: i needed her. i’m the type of person who gives zero shit about anything and depression is farthest thing from me. but in that moment i experienced something i can only describe as a “depression-shock”. you know how they describe love ache in songs and shit “i don’t even want to eat” ? i literally felt like that.
so what i did? i go back and confessed exactly how i feel to her. she used it against me for a year. then another year past and i break up with her again but this time didn’t feel anything at all.
my explanation of this phenomenon is evolution. i was literally thinking marrying her at the beginning but then i discovered how she fucks pretty much everyone. when i break up with her, reptile part of my brain released some chemical shit so i would feel bad, so i would go back to her so i would pass my genes to future generations. for the lizard brain if you are not passing the genes then why the fuck you exist anyway? this is why we see in nature parents defending their offspring with their life. in the great scheme of things you don’t matter. you are branch and you are supposed the create more branches and to make you do that “mother nature” has tricky ways.
your ex immortalized in your mind because you never had the chance to get over him. i mean i couldn’t even get over my ex knowing very well she was no good. yours doesn’t even have a bad quality like this.
sylvia plath’s immortalized her dad in her mind the same way too. if she had him until 17, she would have the chance to get over him and maybe even hate him. isn’t strange, that we are “supposed” to go through a rebellious phase and loosen our ties with the parents so we can be more self sufficient?
yeah.
Hmm you ask a very good question
Thanks for your transparency. I am just discovering that you have long form blogs. I enjoyed your thoughts on love. I can relate.
I remember each love as bright gems spread along a string of life. Or lives, I should say, because when you share you create a duality that only the lovers fully understand.
You sound like an “Alpha Widow”.
It’s definitely a hard thing to go through. I get attached and often feel things from years after. I can relate.
Good questions. I love but time has proven me incapable of being loved so I now live in love with the concept of love while living as a recluse. It’s less painful.
Love is just a mystery
There is no closure. All the great trees in the forest carry scars that still bleed from time to time, but they do so magnificently.
best line “love is mystery” its not exact love..its kind of infatuation ..i guess!! but nice story>>thanks for sharing
I’m starting to date a girl right now who is amazing. She’s smart, funny, and engages with me just as much as I engage with her. As great as this relationship is, I just don’t have the feelings I have for her that I had for a girl in a previous relationship. The “ex” who left a few years back was someone I just fell hard for. But it’s difficult to tell if that same feeling can’t be created once I get to know this girl who I know cares more than the last one. Love is weird.
Recognizebel and I moved to another country the end of August 2022, but I’m not your men you (think) you love. But have the similar experience long time ago with a girl and even still yes I wonder did or do I still love her we had so an amazing time as friends everybody was jealous and was sure we were a couple which we denied because we were just soulmate friends. Were we more than that I do not know she got married and had kids I not. Still think about her, and it is a lot the about the same as you were, we more ? Were we lovers, was I in love, did she love me? And she this girl now,a woman was my nice, outer fathers were twins and as child we did not offend see each other because of fame lie historie, but when we started going out we soon ended up together without anybody else and as good friends always together as best soul friends undescribable we knew it was because of the connection of our fathers “twins” we had such a good connection or where we more? After 30 years did I love her do I still love her, did she? I still wonder.
Elena, I am so sorry for the pain that you have gone through with this. I am saying a prayer for you right now, that you would find deep comfort on your journey. You are so very loved!
20 years and counting…
In my opinion, love is meant to be always growing. Think of it like how a child stares at a parent with a smile, they know nothing else but the love that is shared between each other. It’s being programmed inside you and meant to get vibrating energies from you. You never stop loving, you just detour from the places your heart becomes distressed by.
I know very well how great the pain of love is.
Thanks for visiting my site as well.
Heartfelt
Hi. Want to talk about this through email? I have some points to share about these emotional states, from the perspective of vipassana meditation. Feeling is changing
Silence is definitely more painful. I experienced this recently (you ‘liked’ my article on this subject) and can sympathise. Without answers, we ask ourselves so many questions, blame ourselves, and doubt ourselves.
love love me do
I had a love once. I still dream about her almost every night, even though I am not with her, anymore.
Hi Elena,
I met my first love when I was 17. It was love at first sight. We had a fairly brief (in the scheme of things) and very intense romance. We split when we were both going through our own individual difficulties and looking back, it felt like the world was conspiring against us being together. I tried but I couldn’t really move on properly and we got back together for an even more brief period and then he cheated and we split again. I was heartbroken and I spiraled.
Life moved on and I met someone else and we married and had three children. I loved him in a way. But not the way I did my first love, all intense and movie like, it was more a sort of companionship. I actually don’t think I could fall as deeply in love with anyone at that point because my feelings for my first love, just wouldn’t go away.
I got divorced.
I was quite happy, on my own with my kids and then I got some terrible news. My first love had died in an accident. He was only 30 years old. I was invited to go to his funeral. I was absolutely distraught.
One of your other commenters mentioned grief. I really grieved for my first love and then suddenly my heart was open again.
I met my second love at 30. It was love at first sight.
I’m now 50 and I’m still in love. Sometimes he does something, or looks a certain way and I feel like I fall in love with him all over again.
Reblogged this on Remember to breathe .
So, I wondered … if we love the memory of someone, the way it was from the start when it was fresh and new. In the end, I believed my ex loved the memory of us.