Beyond My Wildest Dreams, By Any Name

As mentioned in other blog posts, I'm 42 years old. I've been through three marriages, spectacularly failing at them all. At my age I had serious doubts that I would even find a relationship that would work for me. However, a good friend of mine gave me a kick in the ass a number of weeks ago and told me I shouldn't give up on relationships and love, or blame myself for the fact that I hadn't done so well on the marriage front. Since he knows a lot about my personal history, including a really rough childhood, he told me with some knowledge and authority that I was just doing what I needed to do at the time, in order to find what I needed in my life. I took those words to heart, and despite a hiccup or two I ended up finding success with online dating.

I say success (though there are no guarantees) because I found something I think is pretty incredible. Almost miraculous, in fact. Not just something, but someone, with whom I seem to have everything I ever wanted or needed. My only problem is that I can't get enough of being around him.

When people talk about love and relationships everyone has their own ideas of what would be the best for them, and what they value most in a potential partner. Some want companionship more than they want anything else. Some want lots of sexual chemistry. Some want a potential spouse and/or someone to have children with. None of these things are necessarily right or wrong - they're simply what we feel we need.

I'm not sure I really knew what I was looking for in a partner; I just knew there were a lot of things about me that a man would need to accept. I have a strange lifestyle, much akin to that of a vampire from what I've been told, and it's not something I can change - nor would I want to.

There are so many things I didn't know I needed, though, and so many more things I didn't realize were even possible. For example, I had no idea that I could be truly calm just lying in someone's arms, despite having chemistry that brings me to my knees (I mean figuratively at the moment, just in case there are perverts other than myself who are reading this). I've never been able to turn off my brain and just relax while being held, but now I don't even have to make an effort at it. I didn't know I could talk to someone for 8 or 9 hours in a day, or spend 12 hours in their company and the two of us would still be talking. I didn't know I could be held and know without a doubt that I was really wanted there.

I guess what I didn't know was that I could really focus on someone, to the point where I'm not thinking about the million other things I need (or want) to be doing. I began living in the moment, because the moment became vital.

Something else slammed into my consciousness within the last 24 hours. It was a confidence I didn't know I could achieve. Like so many people I see the physical flaws in myself far more vividly than others see them. I found myself able to make jokes about them, knowing they just didn't matter. Suddenly years of self-consciousness about certain things evaporated and I said to hell with it - I wasn't going to let those things be anything other than a punchline. It wasn't a conscious effort, though. It just came from hearing the right words at the right time, from the one person I needed to hear them from. Not that real confidence comes from someone else - it's more that the words made me think, and then something shifted inside of me.

When you can be with someone and really feel that the 'worst' things about you are not the glaring issues you thought they were, it's an unbelievable gift that can never be taken away - no matter what the future holds.

I had no idea how important it was to me to find someone capable of comforting me, either. Having lived so long without that, it never occurred to me that I should expect it, so I guess I didn't allowed myself to want that from a partner. I actually got some bad news a couple of weeks ago, when I discovered that I might have been responsible for the death of my ferret. I had no idea how seriously my actions would impact him, and it devastated me. Nearly 7 months after his death I still grieve for Stimpy every single day, and to learn that I might have killed him with my ignorance was a devastating blow. Instead of being shrugged off when I needed a shoulder, though, somehow I was given exactly the words I needed to hear, again from the one person I needed to hear them from. He took away so much pain with a single sentence. I doubt he even knows the impact he had on me at that moment.

Love isn't a declaration given to you in three words. Love is what is breathed into a relationship at every significant moment. It's there when it is needed. Love is when you can't keep your hands off of someone even when sex isn't the intention - you just need to touch them. Actions are love. Love is the way you live within a relationship. It's just there. Being cherished, respected and accepted is something you can feel. Three words can't express or contain what love is meant to be. People say it all the time, without living it.

Finding someone who makes you feel like this begs the question, "Why couldn't I have found you years ago?" In my case I know the answer to that question. Some things have to happen just the way they happen. Life prepares us for these moments so that we can see them when they come to us. Some of us learn the lessons early, and some don't. Until we learn the lessons, though, we don't recognize what may be right before us. Twenty years ago I looked for completely different things. The choices I made twenty years ago were the wrong ones, but nothing would have derailed those choices without me experiencing the results. I made the same choices over and over, getting the same result. Finally I changed what I was doing. What I looked for was completely different, and lo and behold I found it.

Even five years ago I would never have been wise enough, or experienced enough in my own life, to value what's important to me now - the things that I've found that make me so happy. At that time (for the first time in my life) I wasn't running from one relationship to the next. For once I took time away from all that to live and be quiet within myself. I didn't need company, because I enjoyed my own. I was as surprised as anyone else when I signed up for a dating site a while ago. I knew I was ready to be involved with someone again, but whether or not I was ready for the dating world was another issue altogether. I can only be grateful I didn't have to endure that many first dates before I found the man I had learned to look for. Everything I get from our relationship beyond that can not be trivialized as icing on the proverbial cake, though. They aren't mere fluff to decorate the surface of our relationship; they're vitally important even if I didn't know I needed them.

It's a beautiful thing to feel utterly safe with someone; safe in the way that you can share details of your soul and know those secrets will be respected. Being safe with someone can open up the floodgates of our emotions. We can bring things to the light of day that we never dared express before, and shining a light on them can be a huge relief when we see they aren't as dark as we thought they were. Fear of judgment is no longer an issue. You know your secrets will not be used against you at a later date.

No matter what happens, my world has been rocked. Just knowing that these things are possible has made a permanent change in how I look at relationships. Life is like that, though - if you allow it to be. It teaches you new and wonderful things all the time. You just have to be open to the possibilities.