Risking it all…for love
April 9, 2009 by Amelia
Filed under Girlfriends, Love & Intimacy, Relationships, delainemoore
A girlfriend of mine says she’s fallen in love. She’s met him only three times – he lives thousands of miles
away in the United States.. She talks now of how she plans to move there at the end of the year. She will find a new job. Move away from her family. Her eyes go soft and dreamy as she talks about their future… in her mind, he’s The One.
I love this woman. I love her like a little sister. She’s only 27-years-old. I know how badly she wants to find the Real Thing, how much she wants children, and the family dream.
Yet I am torn.
A part of me applauds her: her commitment, her willingness to believe in love and give up all that she has here to pursue it. A part of me is envious too – for she has freedom and youth on her side; no mortgage to pay, no children to feed.
Yet I’m also very frightened for her.
Does she really love this man, or is she so desperately in love with the idea of being in love that it has convoluted her thinking? Why can’t he be the one to sacrifice, to give up his job, to say goodbye to friends and family, to move here to Calgary?
I want to believe that their love is true, that her choices will shower them with good fortune. Yet I haven’t seen him prove his love to her in a hundred different ways; I fear he’s not good enough, that he will sell her short. I see a guy who, although he has feelings for her, is willing to sit back, go on with his unchanged life, and make her be the one who takes all the risks.
I wonder if I’ve become cynical. Maybe I’m transferring my own pain and jadedness from infidelity and divorce onto her situation. Maybe I’m becoming one of those embittered women who say, “BAH! Weddings. True love. It’s all crap.”
I want my girlfriend to be nauseously happy. I want her to prove me wrong, flaunt it in my face, and maybe even restore my own beliefs in love…
But when I think about her situation, my chin drops; my stomach knots. And I wonder how many women have risked, moved away, abandoned their lives to chase their hearts into unfulfilling relationships and marriages. I wonder how many dreams and passions got indefinitely put on the backburner because of the non-stop ensuing responsibilities of children, working, and being a wife.
And I wonder, when women’s dreams comes up short and their Real Lives begin to eat away at their souls, how many wake up each day and stare out the window thinking, “Why did I give up it all up….for love?”
Delaine
I say, time will tell. If she doesn’t plan on moving until the end of the year, that is good because it will give her time to make sure that is what she wants. Also, if he is not right for her, maybe she will notice it before it’s time to move. The other thing, if she has youth on her side and she moves to be with him and it doesn’t work out, she can always move home
I know a girl that it happened to and although it took her some time to figure out the guy was just good for her, she came back and is not happily married here, with a newborn…just trust that time and your friend will determine what the best thing is for her.
Everyone is looking for the end of the rainbow, some find happiness along the way, others discover that the proverbial pot of gold doesn’t really exist and fall by the wayside. There is no point in glamorising this concept as there is no point in ridiculing those that inherently seek it. I personally don’t think that just meeting someone three times is enough to advocate a total change of life style, but that is how I feel and is not relevant in this debate. Real love should be something that is shared, protected, nurtured and experience by both individuals until the day they die. It should be a warm wonderful experience that concerns loyalty, commitment, truthfulness, understanding, compassion and total friendship. You may ridicule this ideal by placing your own traumatic experiences in the way of new thought and emotionally down grading the possibility that true love could in fact occur in your own future. You visualise a similar situation repeating itself in her life and simultaneously provoke the concept that you are somehow the guilty party in your own failed marriage and become emotionally angry that she might experience the same. Once you too believed in all the ideals I have previously mentioned but now find it difficult to comprehend true love without reminiscing upon the injustice that was laid upon your own doorstep and this, maybe in part, where your own feelings of envy and jealousy originate. I think that your friend, if she feels so passionately in love with this fellow, should go out into the big wide world and see how things turn out. Never the less if you are as true a friend as you say you are then you should make it known to her that you will always make sure that there is always a warm place for her to return should anything go wrong with her new found relationship. You, after all, are her friend. Perhaps, if the whole idea of this concerns you as much as you indicate, it might be as well to hint or ask her if there was any possibility of this fellow making a trip to Calgary. At least if he did turn up he would be showing something of the true extent of his feelings for her. Often telephone conversations seem so gloriously ideal and frequently remind me of the old time radio shows my mother used to follow so diligently. As with those radio shows, your own imagination has a lot to do with how you perceive an event, location or someone to be and rarely turn out to be what they truly are. As we all know the spoken word and books in general are primarily based on this principle. To conclude I would say that I know that if I shared the same feelings for someone I would think nothing of flying out to see them, meeting their parents and generally finding out something more personable about them than just an alluring voice at the other end of a telephone. I truly hope your friend finds what she is looking for and experiences a life time of love and devotion for her commitment to this fellow. And as for you dear lady, well I know you will find what you’re seeking in life because you already know what to look for.
Thanks for thoughts guys. It’s hard to tell sometimes where my own jadedness begins and ends. The whole true love thing is something I ponder and call into question; I worry she is believing in a dream that will cause her to sacrifice and suffer. But yes, she must figure it out on her own. And I will stand behind her regardless.
Alan, I’ve tried to talk to her about it, to suggest perhaps he come here to at least prove his devotion. So has her sister and mom. But she gets defensive. She closes down all conversation. She’s made up her mind.
Oh, but to be 27 again:)