The Other Side of Love

This post is going to sound judgy, and in some ways that's unavoidable. Because I am still working through this, and that inherently puts me in a morally inferior position. So this is kind of vulnerable, and I really hope I don't hurt anyone's feelings.

I am single, and I've more or less always been single. I have a lot of single friends, and ALL of them have stories of broken-off engagements, long-term relationships that didn't work out (fizzled or ended badly), and marriages that failed them. All of these events create "emotional baggage" as the cliche goes. It's just a more judgy way of saying that when you grow around a person the way a tree's trunk envelops anything left on it too long, and then you remove the thing, you damage the tree. Sometimes permanently. Sometimes the tree dies.

For someone like me who has experienced life as largely (but not entirely) aro-ace, romantic love looks like a gauntlet to be run as quickly as possible - like on those reality game shows, but with way less padding, and no water underneath. It looks harrowing. Marriage is not a big red button at the other side, where after you press it, you can rest and drink Gatorade. You have to keep running until you run out of gauntlet, all the while hoping it lasts forever. I mean, some people enjoy this.

But it's that "running out of gauntlet" that I've been pondering. I'm interested in the coming out the other side of the mangle of love.

Brief sidenote: about twenty years ago I published some absurdly cynical poetry about marriage. I was tired of those stupid fairytale cliches, and everybody who perpetuated them, as if they in any way resembled life at all (early aro, no doubt). My dad read it, and took a moment to tell me how much he really enjoyed being married, and being a father of eight impossible new adults and adolescents. I seem to remember him raking leaves, although that's impossible, because we only grew conifers.

This is where I get judgy: what if I ever get caught in that mangle? It could happen. I'm old and fat, and very cynical, but I'm not entirely immune to arrows. The old and fat and cynical part just means the gauntlet would be shorter. Yay for me.

What if? It would be bad enough, to see me blubbery on the ground like a beached whale, all puddly and depressed, crying for stupid things that were never going to be. Is there a way to come out the other side of love NOT looking like I've been completely digested?

God promises in a hymn that He will "sanctify to thee thy deepest distress." And on the whole, I can't claim that I think falling in love is the wrong thing to do (it comes from a good place, even when it results in marriage to someone vile), unless the object of your affection is dangerously inappropriate (a child, for instance, if you'll forgive the candor). I think it's possible to choose not to love, but you have to choose soon, and behave in ways that are not propinquitous.

The point is that part of me (the part of me who has not had experiences that would teach me empathy, perhaps?) wonders whether people who show their difficult history in their tree-trunks, those who carry the wounds of their romantic gauntlet, are choosing to be trees instead of starfish. And yes, I understand the absurdity of trying to be something you just aren't.

I can see three possibilities: firstly, that those who still suffer from failed love are being denied the balm that would heal them; secondly, that they are somehow not accepting that balm themselves; and thirdly, that their distress is not over yet, and will someday be sanctified. A fourth possibility is that it HAS been sanctified, and that is what that looks like.

I think, in all my fear for every possible future, I should remember that I am different. Empathy doesn't always come from knowing that humans are all similar and some feelings are universal, but from allowing each person to be unique in what they make from what they are given. It's beautiful, really, sitting here and realizing that there are many, many ways of making good from adversity, and they are ALL right, as long as they do allow good to come from adversity. There's no one right way.

And certainly I should stop believing that just because I might look foolish, I would be doing it wrong.