Losing the person who you thought would be yours forever may be the hardest thing that you’ll ever face. You spent your entire relationship imagining the future you’ll build with your partner, and you may even marry them. But once you feel your heart shatter in your chest, no other emotion can compare. Suddenly, the names you chose for your children disappear, the warm bed you once shared feels colder, and the home in which you spent every day together becomes dark and dreary. Not long ago, you were on top of the world, but now, you’re spending your life going through the motions. You fear your heart will never feel whole again.
I know how you feel because I’ve experienced the same loss that you have. Just two months after I married my husband, I was diagnosed with endometriosis— a painful condition that makes periods intolerable and sex miserable. After an entire year of surgeries, medication, and barely any physical connection with my partner, we were struggling. Nothing seemed to work. We had started an open relationship, but I struggled with the fact that my now-husband was looking for intimacy with other women.
Four months after the happy day when we married, I asked to end my relationship with my husband. My husband refused to choose me and only me for the rest of our lives, even though he said that he loved me. That fateful night, my heart broke as we decided that right now, we weren’t meant for each other.
Since then, I’ve struggled with my husband’s decision not to choose me. How could I be with someone who couldn’t make me his one and only? I married a man who couldn’t choose me over sex, even though I gave up nearly everything to stay with him.
I soon realized that I could never truly heal if I stayed with my husband. If I stayed in that small one-bedroom apartment. I would continue to be the girl I was with him — never the girl I wanted to be before him. I’d never find myself again.
Now I live several hours away from the place that brought me heartbreak and bad memories. Leaving the most familiar place I’d ever known was hard, but it was necessary in order to feel whole again. Had I not left the old me behind, I never would have discovered a stronger version of her. I would have never let myself truly heal like I needed to.
Sometimes you lose yourself in love. Love can be so powerful that it encompasses your entire being and makes you lose the version of yourself that you once were. But when you lose that love, it changes you forever. It makes you question if you’ll ever find true love after losing so much of yourself.
But no matter how you feel now, you will find yourself without them. You will love and be loved again. You will find someone who makes you believe in fairy tales, who reminds you why people write love songs. The person you find will love you so deeply that you’ll wonder how you ever believed anything else is love. They won’t hurt you. They won’t make you question your decision to love them. They’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted and more. You’ll feel like you can take on the world with them because they’ll remind you that you’re capable of anything you dream.
You’ll heal after losing your person and they will love you again. And so, you’ll become everything you’ve ever wanted to be. You’ll have so much more than a relationship; you’ll have a life partner who truly cherishes you, that makes you feel whole in more than one way. You may feel like finding “The One” may take an eternity, but you will find them, and they’ll be worth your time.
Photo by Spencer Backman on Unsplash
