When Love Isn’t Enough

You have this idea in your head. That if you both love each other more than either of you thought possible, that somehow it would be enough. Because love conquers all right? You dedicate hours, days, weeks, years to each other.

You make plans for your future. You’re going to live in Oregon and drink coffee and make breakfast together. You’re going to wait to see that movie because you know he wants to see it too. His family becomes your family and you buy presents for his niece and she calls wanting to talk to you on the phone. You learn to love his annoying dog because his home isn’t the same without his buddy there. You are both loyal and the thought of seeking out others never occurs to either of you. You feel sorry for those who can’t trust their partners. “What a horrible way to be, thank god we aren’t like that.”

But sometimes no matter how hard you try, love isn’t enough. Love cannot change the fact that the futures you both want are different.

No matter how much you try to change their mind, you shouldn’t want to. His mind was made up long before you were ever in the picture. And yes you are beautiful and wild and everything he could ever want. He writes poems about you and plays melodies on the piano that sound like the first hopeful promises you ever made to each other. You share your hometown with him and every special place becomes “ours”. But you can’t be his entire world, just as he can’t be yours.

The future waits for no one. And each day that you deny living the life you imagined is another day wasted you can never get back.

You cannot make someone want what you want. And sometimes that is the hardest thing about being in love. Learning to give them up. Some people are simply meant to fall in love, but not be together. And that doesn’t mean your relationship was a failure. The happiest moments of your life will be the ones you spend smiling with someone who matters to you. And he will always matter to you.

You will never be the same again and that’s ok. Because too much pain is caused by trying to hold on to things. You will survive and life will still be beautiful, I promise.