They say its better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. They obviously never met my ex wife. I have been in love three times that I can actively remember as an adult, I do remember having one huge crush on my auntie when I was 4 or 5 thanks to my family convincing me she was Wonder Woman in disguise.
I wanted to write about Love from my own experience, bc I have fallen in love in person and through an online medium and let me tell you folks, despite what others might say, the end result is exactly the same.

Lessons in Love #1

If a woman lets you into her deepest thoughts, feelings, fears and desires, and as long as your not gay... trust me, your gonna fall in love. This was how I first fell in love, University, I was young, she was 3 years older than me yet she was emotionally troubled through some pretty bad relationships and for some reason that was very attractive.. I wanted to show this woman I had been given an all access pass to emotionally, how wonderfully she could be loved. Although we only ever actually kissed, we have never had a relationship, our friendship remains as strong today as it was back then.

Lessons in Love #2

Online relationships are an ideal based on a verbal exchange of written words read in a personal way depending on how you view the person. For example, I love you (when said to a relative) is perceived in written form as family respect, whereas I love you (now said to a partner) conveys more intimacy. In both exchanges, I simply wrote I love you, but with an extra piece of text, your brain tells you to look at it in two very distinct ways.

I always enjoyed the mysterious aspect an online chat could bring. I entered into VP and began a crusade to meet new people in far off places. Originally I was spending time helping others to fix problems on their computers and help understand how the online chat program works. This was before the net became an infested playground for sickos. I met a woman, in America that I genuinely helped fix a computer problem, and over the course of weeks we chatted more and more, less in public and more in private, then it graduated away from the public domain to the personal domain and before you know it, we both began giving up sleep to be in each others world. The love I experienced with this woman was very similar, but more intense as she was out of reach. We had exchanged pictures, talked on the phone and attempted webcams, but they were in their infancy and it sucked pretty bad on dial up modems..lol

Distance is a major factor in an online relationship and it places a huge strain on love. It gives birth to paranoia and mistrust and we had a share in all of that darkness. Coming from a place where chatting to other people is as easy as clicking a mouse button made her very paranoid about my actions out of her scope of control. I was totally respectful, forsaking all to be with this woman, but distance made it harder and harder for us to communicate trust effectively and in the end this was the preverbial straw that broke the camels back. We never ended nastily, we just realised over the years we tried to make this work (oh yeah, years!) that our worlds could never truly exist together.

Lessons in Love #3

Love and marriage are two very powerful concepts and after my first two liasons with Love, this final foray would be the most emotional. I decided I was ready to begin dating again (in between my time away from love I met an alcoholic, a very overweight woman who ended the relationship before it began, a crazy nympho that lied and liked it up the butt, and a manic depressive, great times.. but I did manage to reunite two both with past lovers after firstly getting one into AA and the other into therapy, so I dont count those relationships are scarring in anyway)

I had been told about Love @ Lycos so I took the bait, bit the bullet and signed up to see who was out there. This time though, I would keep it simpler and try and meet someone in the UK, at least in England to have a relationship with. No more shotgun relationships, this time something slow that can build from a friendship.

This was where I met my wife, her profile was simple, she liked simple things, she liked intimacy and I really like intimacy, that comfortable silence you can enjoy, cuddling on a sofa watching trash or sitting opposite each other in a crowded restaurant, silent smiles across faces, the world on pause for as long as you want. She filled that so easily, and getting to know her was nice and slow, she lived about an hour away from me so seeing her wasnt a problem and yes, she had a 5yr old son from a previous marriage, but I'm not the type of person who would shun a woman bc a child was already in her life. We become closer and closer, we clicked on many levels and eventually love entered the mix. We moved in together, we married and settled down together.

I never viewed marriage as important, I will be honest about that and I had said it to her on more than one occasion. I was quite a realist about things, intimacy comes from people, not from marriage. True, my parents like many others had divorced and I saw a nasty side to marriage so the concept seemed lost on me. She convinced me tho, she made me see the positives, the commitment it meant, the joining of two people in the eyes of the all those around them, she got my surname, we became a proper family, I let go of my doubt and we married.

Once of the things about this love was my control of logic and reason. I held much of the stronger emotions back for safety, in case of mistrust, paranoia and much of the darker emotions I had experienced with my online love. She never held back and poured all of her affection into our relationship and marriage. I let go of my doubts and fears and allowed the raw emotion to retake control and for a while, we were blissfully happy.

Then the truth came out. She was pretending to be someone she wasnt because she fell in love with me and hoped that if she tried real hard, she would become the person she was playing. She lied to me, she faked her past, her relationships, the type of person she was and she cheated on me, exactly like she did with her last husband (all this unfortunately came out post marriage ending)
After the shock, the anger, the upset and all the sadness began to blur, where friends and family give you the honest reality about your lack of control over this, you were not to blame, you give that relationship your all, they all saw it, they all wanted to say something about the way she treated you.. etc.. but you refused to see it, love as it does turn out.. can be very very blind.. or at the very least it blocks out the ability to defy your feelings until shown the truth (as I was) in a raw form that allows no emotional coverup.

I asked her, I wanted to give her a platform to state her case. "Why?" and her response (this based on her knowing we would never be together, as is the case with all relationships.. once the trust has gone, it will end in every direction) "I don't know....."
'I don't know' was the worst and best answer she could give. It renewed my faith in love, knowing that I loved without fault and at the same time gave love a harsh reality that means you can never truly know if falling in love will last forever... but after saying that, I would rather love and lose and will continue to do so...

Thank you for reading..

I also think they say ignorance is bliss

Im not sure that either are absolute philosophies, but I think most fall into one category or the other of 'happiness'

in the end though, attitude, decides happiness,,,

so someone who is ignorant of the world can choose to be happy just like someone who has been through heartache,,,

but it probably is just a little easier to choose happiness when you havent experienced much heartache,,,

Too long for my short attention span.

Same Here

Unfortunately; all relationships are built on lies. People think lying is the best way to protect someone from getting hurt but instead when the person finds out you lied; you have ended the relationship as there can no longer be any trust. I am honest with the person I am and don't pretend to be anything else. This keeps me single as people just aren't willing to accept you as you are. They are always trying to change or mold you into the perfect partner rather than accept you for who you are with all your faults. Personally; I would rather stay single than to enter into a relationship as a phony.

Better to be a real somebody than a fake nobody.

ya really

zactly what I was thinking

Same here. I have a short attention span

better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

I have just never bought into this..



"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana

I have. I'd rather enjoy life, including relationships and perhaps falling in love, even if it doesn't work out in the end, rather than wondering what could have happened.

I agree, and I have gone through some extremely painful losses of love. Eventually I outgrew the need to grieve over them, and now I can see how incredibly lucky I was to experience such joy in the first place.

There is no life without pain, but there can be life without love. I do not choose that kind of life.

I guess how I look at it is the wasted time I spent trying to have a relationship or trying to love someone when I could have done something better like going back to school or making more money.

Why can't you go to school or make more money while being in a relationship?

Because relationships demand too much of your time. They complain they never see you or you don't spend enough time with them. I usually go to school after working all day and going to school 4 or 5 times a week; you don't see much of the person; plus you have homework, and housework to do on the weekends.

Huh, I have NEVER had a man want more of my time. Usually they want less. LOL. Even when I was married, my husband spent hours per day by himself with headphones on listening to music. On weekends he would go to the beach for shore fishing, sometimes with a buddy. I was not invited.

I don't get wanting to be with someone who doesn't want to spend time with you...

I get the opposite problem actually. I like spending time with a person but there are times I simply can't due to work or other commitments. I don't think a couple needs to spend x amount of hours per week. Sometimes I can spend a couple of hours in a week; others I may be about to spend countless hours in a week. I personally have always given a guy as much time to himself as he needs and visa versa. It all comes out in the wash when you aren't keeping track of how much time you need to spend with a person.

Haha, you think he did that stuff before we were married? And, note I said WAS married? Although the reasons for the divorce were a lot more serious than that.