I Promise To Love You Like I’m Gonna Lose You

As far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted this sense of security that I never acquired.

Although it’s hard to explain exactly what I’m searching for, I believe it’s the same sense of security everybody wants, but we all go about obtaining differently.

Some people feel more secure alone. They’ll feel uneasy when they are attached to someone, and get nervous if they start to be even remotely dependent in their normally self-sufficient lives.

That’s not me.

I don’t avoid attachment. Instead, I look for it. To me, avoiding attachment is begging for loneliness.

But I don’t want to be lonely. I have never felt uneasy at the thought of emotional closeness. In fact, it’s what I constantly crave.

But, I am anxious. I’m nervous that I’ve fallen only for those who are not willing to give me the emotional closeness that I long for, and it has left me bitter and unable to trust.

It has left me questioning what security really means.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I stopped believing we all desire the same bond that I long for. What I can tell you though, is I tried my absolute hardest not to believe it.

I held on for so long to relationships where I was inevitably going to lose someone. But the cold, hard truth is, I never had them to begin with.

Instead of accepting the truth that my love interests did, in fact, love differently, I denied that they would ever betray my trust in the virtues of love. Because to me, love was losing yourself in another person.

I was so preoccupied with the idea that my romantic partners would eventually come out of their shells. That maybe, like me, they were broken, and needed some time to trust. But deep down I believed that in time they would see, I was worthy of their love. That with me, they could let go of their fears and would soon see I would never hurt them. I would never hurt them, the way they had been hurt before.

I was so preoccupied, because that’s what I needed someone to show me. I needed someone to make me feel as though the security I wanted was real. I needed approval. I needed someone to be there for me.

I needed someone to tell me that they would never leave, and actually mean it.

But my worrying and stressing was too much dependency for the unemotionally attached people I longed for. The people I longed for dealt with their rejection by distancing themselves, and suppressing their feelings. They did not want intimacy the way that I did, and I was looking for a response that I would never get.

I first noticed this pattern of falling for the emotionally unattached when my last relationship ended. Or maybe, it was when I knew I needed to admit it.

Many of my previous relationships were broken, because of my fear of abandonment, but this one was particularly incurable. This would soon be the unrequited love I never saw coming. The one where I thought I would finally be secure for the rest of my life, but it completely rocked my world.

I began to blame myself for pushing the relationship to a point of emotional closeness that it was not ready for. I blamed myself for wanting a security that I would never get, and blamed my ex for letting me believe he would give that to me.

Before that, I had always continued along my pattern. I had always tried to find someone to cure me. Maybe I thought finding someone more broken, would make me feel more normal.

But it was a never ending quest to find something that could not be found. It was an attempt at undoing pain and rejection that I experienced long ago, and an unconscious pattern that ended up reinforcing my fear of abandonment.

It was when that relationship ended, that I truly began to lose hope. That I began to lose faith in people. That I thought everything I had been searching for, had led up to that moment of failure. That I could never have the one thing I really wanted.

But the key is to believe in what I want more than ever. To believe that all of these failed attempts at love, are preparing me for a love even better than I imagined.

It is so easy after being rejected to believe that you can not break this pattern. To believe that you are doomed to be disappointed for the rest of your life.

It is so easy to play the victim.

It is so easy to lose trust, and become bitter.

Sure, I can blame my ex for leaving me when I needed him the most. I can keep on searching for the person who will reject me and reinforce my belief that I am not good enough; my belief that I am just not worthy of love.

Or, I can trust again.

Instead of trusting the man that is going to inevitably hurt me, I can trust my gut. I can trust life. I can trust that this pattern was hand picked for me, to make me realize the true beauty of my capacity for emotional attachment.

Yes, there is great pain in becoming attached to people who will never love you. There is pain in rejection, and there is pain in heartbreak.

I am hurting, because I experienced the greatest pain I have ever known. I have time and time again experienced failed relationships, only to truly love the person who will never love me.

But there is also beauty in that sort of heartbreak, and if you are constantly saying, “Why me?” you will never find it.

When I asked myself why this was happening to me, I convinced myself I was doomed. I believed that this was my fate, and when I thought I was going to end up with the person who couldn’t love me the way I wanted, I thought I was unlovable.

I thought I had done something that made me unworthy of the love that I wanted my whole life, and that was the reason he left.

But he was always standing with one foot out the door, and I was too preoccupied to see it.

Thankfully because of him, I can see more clearly. I know when something doesn’t feel right, even before it happens.

So now it’s time to believe again. To believe that we will all get the love that we deserve. I know that I deserve the kind of love where someone will lose their self in me. I know I would never let them fall, because I know the pain of falling.

If there’s anything my pattern of dismissal has shown me, it is that I am strong. If I can stand by the people who let me down, imagine how easily I will stand by the people who build me up.

Now that I’m not preoccupied with loving the wrong people, I can see the people who love me. Instead of seeking approval, I’m seeing that I have always been loved by those who see my worth, even when I didn’t see it myself.

I am learning to trust, and I am learning to take care of myself (something that I have constantly neglected to do.)

I am learning to take care of the people who have stood by me, instead of take care of the ones who left. It is such a blessing to see that although I have felt unloved, that I can admit I was wrong.

You need to see that. You need to know that you are not stuck, and you can break any pattern. You need to know that you are not a victim, just a piece of a puzzle that you need to put together.

Maybe your puzzle has a few more pieces, but don’t give up; and definitely don’t try to put two pieces together that don’t fit.

And finally, if you want to love like you are going to lose someone, then do it. But know that there truly is someone who will never, ever want to lose you.