“You will fall in love again,” they say, and you file this in the pile of ludicrous reassurance that feels like a never-ending bout of plane turbulence.
I remember this well.
In the early days after a divorce, while you’re stomping out the embers of a first love flame, so many people… whew…just say the craziest things: It will get better with time. You will be okay. You will fall in love again. See what I mean? Ludicrous.
Sure, I’d seen examples of this so-called second love – among friends, celebrities, even as close to home as my own parents. Maybe I knew logically it could happen, like there was at least a 3% chance, but I couldn’t imagine a world where I would ever trust myself again to be in relation to another person. It all felt safer to stay firmly planted in a hyper independence I was seeding for myself.
When I married my first love, I remember thinking that we had won. I cringe as I write that, the way I usually do when I write something really true. But offering myself some grace here – this is exactly how we’re conditioned to feel on our wedding day: blissed out, victorious, and rewarded with an upcoming tax break.
I just thought we had done it – and by “it” I mean skirted tremendous heartbreak. I was 24 and thought I’d made it out unscathed… which is perhaps the most adorable thing I’ll ever say to you. I was too young and too naive to grasp that this idea of a win, the idea of a mountain you could summit and set up a cozy little camp on top, was not a mountain top at all, but rolling hills that you continue to make your way up and over for the rest of your life. What the actual fuck.
The first time I admitted to having this feeling – the winning wedding day feeling – my husband and I sat on opposite ends of a therapist's couch, exiled from each other. My marriage ended, as you probably have assumed, and what came after was a phase of wild numbing, exploring and unmooredness. During this time, I worked to reprogram myself to stay ahead of grief and avoid any chance of being hurt again. I replaced my wiring for deep romanticism with Only Surface Level Flings Allowed – dating men much too young, much too old, and much too finance for me.
My connection with these people was safe in its fantasy. There was so much control woven into all of it, and still smelled like a mountaintop mindset. I was anxious and eager to just hurry up and find the Next One so it could be Great and we could be Cute and I would be Healed! Like I could hot wire myself out of this weird uncertainty.
All of these flings burned out quickly, partly because this was the purpose they served but also because I was cutting both of us off at the knees. To stay in this zone of safety I was making sure that I was never actually bringing who I was to the table, and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t that interested in embracing who they actually were either. I held them as a fantasy version of themselves, then was disappointed when they didn’t follow the script I had so carefully crafted for both of us.
But then, two years after my divorce I was dating a man… a boy… much younger than me. He was an aspiring chef who read Bell Hooks. (I feel like that sums it up pretty well for you.) We met on a street corner in Brooklyn and had a whirlwind romance – quick, electric, consuming. He was curious about me, and surprisingly, I actually liked the way that felt, after a string of dates where curiosity seemed to only flow the other way.
On our third date, we were on an afternoon walk when one of his curiosities led me to tell him about my divorce and the death of my father that happened six months after. This was the first time I had given him the real deal of what I had been navigating before we met.
As we walked, shoulder to shoulder, I was surprised at how comfortable I felt sharing the truth with him. When we arrived back at my apartment to cook dinner, I had my key in the front door when I looked up to find him frozen on the sidewalk, white as a ghost after hearing about my last two years. He muttered something quickly about a raincheck, and needing to catch the C. He turned and bolted down the street, overtaking anyone in his way.
This memory is still really tender, but it also led to one of the most badass things I’ve ever done. I watched in disbelief as this boy literally ran from the truth of who I was, and then I let myself into my apartment, sat in the dead center of my couch, and wrapped my arms around myself and cried. I remember concentrating on the weight of my hands on my own back. I remember telling myself that I was okay, not broken, not unhealed, and that there was no need to get small and scared again. I was actually really proud of myself that I had let him in.
After about ten minutes of this, there was a knock at my door. I hopped up and ran to the door, ready for my rom com moment. He’d obviously come back to tell me he was sorry! That he had been scared! He was a fool! A fool!!
I swung open the door and… it was UPS... needing a signature for a package that wasn’t. even. for. me. As I signed the pad, my eyes swollen and my face blotchy, I watched my hand move around to make my loopy signature. Suddenly, seeing my name right there in front of me, I started to laugh. All of it immediately felt hilarious: the world was turning, packages were out for delivery. And there was my name – evidence that I was standing here, very much a part of this spinning wild weird world.
There is a chapter in Jenny Slate’s Little Weirds that is one sentence long. It is perhaps my favorite chapter ever written. Entitled “A Prayer,” it reads in totality: “As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.”
Up until that afternoon, and the steadiness I found in it, I’d been in fear that losing a love, or not having a relationship I could disappear into, would erase me completely. That day, as I signed my name on the UPS pad, I realized I actually wasn’t unmoored anymore. After a few years of charting my own little zigzaggy way through grief, I realized that I had, without realizing it, moored into myself. And because of this, I was probably ready to actually take a real risk again. This time with a dose of reality along for the ride, too.
When my Second Love arrived, he didn’t feel like lightning. He felt like a two-way street of curiosity. The logical cautiousness in my feelings towards him after the string of lightning-esque flings actually gave me the freedom to not be cautious about who I was at all.
I’ll admit, there are plenty of times I bring some of my fantasy tendencies or the not-so-helpful baggage from my first round of love to this relationship, but on the flip side, the perspective I gained from that time is also the reason I can right my course quickly.
I don’t love to write about the details of something while I’m in the middle of living it –– I usually allow distance to bring clarity before I put it into words. But I will say this: my second love surprises and grows me in some unforeseen way every day. We regularly check if we’re living better lives together than we would be apart – some days the answer is an incredibly clear “yes” and some days we have to think about it for a minute. He drives me up the freaking wall and also feels like home. He’s nurturing, direct, and floors me when he casually alludes to something about myself that I didn’t even know existed. It’s insanely fun to have someone see me so clearly.
The thing you really have going for you when you get to do a second love, is the knowing that you survived the dissolving of the first one. It’s a super power. You did it. Your heart kept beating. You realize that everyone was right – you would, actually, be okay one day. All of this brings a peace to your next go, a steadiness that you didn’t have the first time around.
Until the mooring that happened somewhere between my first and my second, I was more caught in controlling the risk of being erased, then by actually being down to feel a love.
God, the bravery it takes to feel a love. The bravery that it takes to actually show someone the wildest, most cobwebby, honest parts of your being, while being sure if they reject them, you will not cease to exist. It’s an aliveness I wish for all of us. It’s worth it all.