My love is a different kind of love.
I don’t pretend to love people better or more deeply, or even more quickly, but I definitely love people differently than the way most people love others. And that’s bitten me in the ass more than once. Doesn’t matter – it’s just who I am.
Note that I’m using “love” here really liberally. “Care” is perhaps a better term. I mean “love” in the most general sense, love for friends and romantic love alike.
A few years ago, someone took complete advantage of me. After not much time of knowing him, we started dating, and over a period of several months, he betrayed me in ways that most people can’t imagine. I fell in deep, romantic love with a person who didn’t exist, and it ended with a really scary situation where I could have been really, really hurt, physically. I’m lucky that I wasn’t, but the emotional damage was done, and I feel really stupid that I ever let that situation happen in the first place.
When that happened, I shut down. For a long time, I not only refused to trust people, but I refused to love people. Even people that I had loved unconditionally in the past came into question in some cases. I grew distant from almost everyone in my life and was really depressed. Some of my friends stuck through it with me. Others did not. Of the friends who waited out this low point in my life, some of them forgave me of things in ways that I’m not sure I deserved forgiveness, and of that, I’ll always be thankful.
The entire experience has changed the way I think about love. I look at love in two different ways – trust and passion.
Trust is something that is very, very, VERY hard for me. Up until that point in my life, I always trusted people until they gave me a reason not to. It wasn’t necessarily the smartest way to live, but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t cautious at all. I just saw the best in people and chose to give everyone a chance. I wish I could still feel that way. Today, I don’t trust anyone when I meet them, and in fact, I’m suspicious more than I should be. It isn’t really about trusting someone in terms of “will they rip me off” or “will they steal things from me” or something like that. No…I don’t trust people not to leave my life. I refuse to ever again get close to someone who will split the first time things aren’t perfect. I understand growing apart, and I know that not everyone who was once in my life left in a bad way – that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about truly caring about someone and then having that ripped away, either because they run or because they’ve lied to me.
I don’t trust people not to do that to me, to the point of paranoia perhaps. It takes me a long time to trust someone on that level.
And then there’s the passion part of love. Now, I fully believe that passion comes into play when you’re just loving a friend, too. I want my life to be filled with people that I passionately enjoy, people that I love hanging out with. I think there’s an epidemic in this world where people are “friends” with large groups of other people that they don’t actually really like. I’m not interested in having “friends” who just fill space in my life. I want to passionately love everyone who fills my time.
That, for me, is the easy part. I’ve always been a good judge of how well I’ll get along with someone, even based on just a little information. For example, I can go on a first date with a guy and know within a few minutes whether or not there’s the chance of a second date or a friendship. Or, when friends describe to me their significant others, I can usually pretty accurately tell them whether or not I’d be friends with the person even before meeting them, and I’m rarely wrong. I just know the things that are important to me, and the things that I don’t want in my life. I’m open to getting to know anyone, even if I don’t necessarily have a good first impression, because I feel like everyone has something to bring to the table…but like I said, I’ve rarely been wrong about people based on my gut reaction to whether or not we’ll become friends.
So these two points of love are in constant conflict with me. I get excited about people really easily. When I meet someone that I really, really, enjoy, I can be a little overwhelming to him or her because I am so quick to love.
At the same time, I don’t trust that person. I’m excited to the extent of obsession to grow closer with new people in my life, but I have to be very close to them before I trust them to not leave me or lie. It’s a weird feeling, and I’m sure it’s weird for other people as well.
Yesterday, I was struggling with these two feelings, battling with the idea that I could like someone so much, yet not trust him at all (in terms of staying/leaving). I found myself trying to think of the “right thing” to say to explain it, and I hate that. It’s hard for me to express myself, and most of the time, I just fall into a hole and start digging it deeper and deeper and deeper.
I still think the best of people. I get impatient because I just want to know everything about new people in my life as quickly as possible. It’s easy for me to find things to like, and easy for me to forgive people for past mistakes they might have made. I’m really open about most subjects, and when I feel truly connected to someone, whether it be after an hour or after a year, I’m open about all subjects. I don’t like secrets, even if what I have to say paints myself in a bad light.
When I meet someone, if I care about them, I do so unconditionally, from the start. It’s my choice to have them in my life (or not). If there’s something about them that is “bad,” I don’t have to like it, but it shouldn’t affect “how much” I care about the person. I don’t look at loving like a scale. Either I care about you, or I’m indifferent (I don’t really hate people, in most cases). If something about you is truly horrible, I can choose not to have you in my life…if I do anyway, it means that i FULLY care, not just kinda care.
It’s a different kind of love, it’s a scary, whirlwind kind of love. It’s the only way I know how to love, and maybe that’s wrong, but that’s me all the same.
About Rori
Rori is the founder of Between My Sheets. She works full time as a writer, reviewer, and online educator and can be reached at rori-at-betweenmysheets.com
