Backstory
Many years ago (10 or so) I fell in love with a guy. It was my first 'real' love and I really fell hard in a ridiculously short period of time. He was a player/liar and deep down I knew that but I decided to look at him through the rose-colored glasses. Now looking back, I think I was in love of the idea of him I had created in my head, ignoring all the red flags. Anyways, our story didn't last that long, maybe about two months before I decided I've had enough. Then the real hell begun as it took me years to get over this heartbreak. Again, looking back, I feel like I just didn't want to let go of the pain, for some reason I was holding onto it all that time. It also created a bad image in my head about men in general and I believed for a long time that I'll never have anything better when it comes to relationships in my life and that being with guys without any commitment is the best.
Fastforward to June 2020 and my first (and so far only) night out after the lockdown, we went to this place where me and my friends usually go out. It was just an usual party until I saw the guy I was talking about above, lol. So I just went about my night not being bothered but just shocked because I go there all the time and all of a sudden he appears. Then me and my friends were suppose to leave and he was standing by the door so it felt kind of awkward. He smiled at me and said Hello and I said Hello and then he started a conversation asking me how I'm doing... We exchanged a few words when his girlfriend came in furiously and hugged him obviously trying to make 'he is mine' statement. I didn't even bother looking at her, I literally just saw an arm around his neck, I laughed and left. I just couldn't help but thinking how in the world I was ever in love with this guy and suffered so much because of him as of course, none of those feelings are present now. I am just left with this funny story to tell.
So my question is: Why do we fall in love with certain people and why it is so hard to get over someone?
Now I can honestly laugh at this scene that happened which is something I couldn't even imagine back when I was heartbroken. Of course, this wasn't my only heartbreak but it was the first. I still repeated the same mistake of being with someone who obviously wasn't the right match for me and recovering from that experience for a long time. I guess the biggest lesson I have learned from these experiences is to set my standards higher, that I am, as everyone else, worthy of love and that waiting/wishing for someone to change for you is something that will never happen.
Looking back at my story again, I can't help but ask myself "What was I thinking?" - what is exactly I saw in these guys? They were obviously players and I knew that, they didn't have a lot of qualities that could balance out/justify their 'bad side' but there was something in them I was attracked to a lot. So I guess I should go way back and evaluate my beliefs about love and my surrounding that shaped my beliefs because I am pretty sure that's where it all started. I was never surrounded by a good example or a relationship/marriage, not even in my family. Growing up thinking that all men cheat, that a woman should stay at home and take care of the kids being dependant on the man definitely rooted deep in my being and it lead me to the relationships I had.
Do we follow a certain pattern that is engraved in our subconsciousness, shaped by the way we grew up? Do we let one bad experience set a tone for the future relationships? Why does it sometimes takes so long to get over someone? When are we finally allowing ourselves to heal and re-write our beliefs? Is there any way we can choose who to fall in love with? All of these questions are something I asked myself and I think I still should ask, because this is not about those guys and the way they were/are, it's not about what they did to me, it's about me, my feelings, lessons, emotional growth and a lot more I should discover. I feel like with any other deep, personal, big question we might have, the more we dig into, the deeper we dive in, the more we can get to know the core of our being, heal and expand spiritually. A lot of times these places of our being can be quite dark and traumatizing even so we often ignore it, fearing to face it which is something I did all these years and to be honest, am still doing a lot of times. But I feel like I am finally ready to bring them to the surface and deal with them. It is also interesting to me how we might meet amazing people on our life journey that we are not in love with even though our mind tells us they would be a better, reasonable choice but our heart/emotions don't agree.
