Loving Another Man

Love is hard sometimes. No, not sometimes. A lot of the time. We think it should be easy, but really, have you ever had a love that was always easy?

I'm one of those people who loves love. I always have.

When I was around 12, I started reading Sweet Dreams books. What are those you ask? They were romance books written especially for teenagers. They had titles like P.S. I Love You, Little Sister, and Princess Amy (all of which I read). There were over 230 of them and I poured through them endlessly. My mom couldn't keep up with buying them for me but my friends and I traded them back and forth like baseball cards.

I didn't just read them and move on. I read my favorites over and over again.

I loved how the main characters fell in love. It was similar to the instalove romances of today (but without the sex, just lots of kissing). They were short and had the happiest of happy-ever-after endings.

I think that's where I developed my first beliefs and understandings of love. And honestly, it kind of messed me up.

I thought once I met "the one" I'd fall in love and we'd live happily ever after. And I believed that until I was in my forties.

In my late thirties, I married a kind and gentle man who treated me like his princess. Lindsay. That was weird at first because I never really wanted to be the princess. Until I was treated like one. And then, I liked it.

We didn't waste time. It was February 16th when we started talking online. A couple of weeks later, we met face to face. That summer, he moved in with me and in September he proposed. The following May, we were married.

It was like a fairy tale. A strange fairy tale, but our fairy tale. Lindsay was different from other men. He had mental health problems, but it didn't seem like it was anything I couldn't handle. When he had a panic attack, we worked through it together. When his mental health got worse, I wasn't worried about it. I was happy to stay home with him, more often than not.

He had to put up with me, too. I'm strange. I swear like a sailor, hate going out, fart and burp like no one is watching and ya, there's the erotica - I write it. Other men couldn't deal with most of that. Lindsay took it in stride.

Sounds perfect, right?

It was. Until he got sick and died and left me a widow at 49. We barely had a little more than 13 years together. As hard as being his caregiver was, I would have done it forever if it meant he could have stayed with me.

Honestly, I thought I would be single forever. I didn't think there could possibly be another man who could measure up to Lindsay. It was impossible to conceive of the idea that there might be another man who could understand me, deal with all my quirks, and not make me miserable. Lindsay was "the one" so I couldn't possibly love another man.

Until I did.

J. is a lot like Lindsay. Kind, gentle and very willing to just let me be who I am. He's different, too. But he's good. And I do love him.

But it's hard to wrap my brain around the idea that I can love both J. and Lindsay. It's difficult to come to terms with the idea that I wasn't being disloyal to Lindsay by falling in love with J.

I can't forget about Lindsay. I won't. But sometimes I feel like loving J. means letting go of the life I had with Lindsay and that makes my heart ache. I know I withdraw sometimes. But only because my brain is struggling with loving them both.

Love isn't one thing. Love is many things. There's different kinds of love and you can love different people in different ways for different reasons. It doesn't mean I love Lindsay any less than I did.

I guess there is no "the one." Not for everyone, anyway.