The Third Love

Let me tell you about the types of men I’ve loved. Some good. Some bad. Was it all there fault? Nope. In many cases, I didn’t know who I was so they could never love me the way that I needed to be loved.

I didn’t know me.

I didn’t love me.

I couldn’t love them the way that they deserved to be loved.

Love was a concept to big to put in words and yet I desired it so much. I believed in it. I craved it. I wanted love and I needed to be loved.

Don’t most people?

What happens when you wake up and realize that you keep falling in love with the wrong type of people? What happens if that love abuses you or leaves you so messed up that you can’t fathom the pain of ever giving of yourself so completely? You sigh. You withdraw. You start to believe that you will never know love. True love.

That’s how I felt. I kept falling in love with the same kind of men. Until Mr. C. He was different. I couldn’t explain it. For the first time. I felt safe. I felt wanted. I felt loved. It was easy. It felt natural. It was healthy.

I was in shock. I was surprised. I was scared. I didn’t believe that a love without cursing or yelling, cheating or hitting was possible. We women are taught that no one is perfect and that we must fight for love. That love was hard.

However, that’s not true. I read this great article called  We Only Fall in Love with Three People in Our Lifetime – Each One for a Specific Reason by Kate Rose while perusing Facebook about a month ago. Man, this article was the truth.

This article had a profound effect because it basically summarized my  life story. I wasn’t alone. It basically said that we fall in love with three people in our lifetime:

• Idealistic love—the one that seems like the fairy tales we read as children.
• Hard love—the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved.
• Third love  – the one we never see coming. The one that usually looks all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be.

I’ve had 5 idealistic loves. I’m not sure if they knew it. We just existed in this space between fantasy and reality and planned lives we would never have and futures that wouldn’t be. We believed in fairy tales. These loves occurred between high school and college.

I’ve had 2 hard loves. These loves were painful. They were loves that I tried to fit. Loves that I wanted to mold and manipulate into the greatest love ever to be. But, they couldn’t. They weren’t designed to be my forever love. They were designed to teach me about myself. I was hurt. I was broken. They shaped my belief that this can’t be real. This can’t be the love that God has for me.

And then there was three. The third love from the third type of person. The love that just works. That’s the best type of love. I know because I have it. For the first time in my life.

You can too. We just have to get out of our own way and love ourselves enough to heal from love #2 to get to the third love.  We can’t let number #2 have all the power over how our lives turn out. We have to move past the pain,the anger, the resentment, the failure – all of it. Once we do, we allow ourselves to know and appreciate a safe and easy love.