August 2, 2021 The Louisville Vacation
I just had a long chat with a fellow I met in a bar who ended a 44-year marriage recently. Actually, his wife stepped out on him. He’s devastated but he’s pretending he’s over it and he’s moving on. And he spoke at great length trying to convince me of that. What he was really trying to do was convince himself. I didn’t buy his story for one minute.
I explained that if he were really over it, he would be indifferent. The opposite of love is indifference. A more positive term for the concept of indifference is acceptance. But the opposite of love is not hate and it is not anger. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. If you hate, you still love in a way that may destroy you. You know when you are over someone, and you are moving on with your life, when revisiting that memory and that relationship and that time does not evoke a strong negative emotional response.
The journey from lost love to a place of peace of heart and mind is long and incredibly arduous. You may believe you can introspect and figure out all you need for yourself by yourself, but that is not the case. A therapist can walk you through the process of grieving and healing and fostering a new perspective. If you think therapy is a bunch of bullshit, like this man does, you are in for continued pain and heartbreak and disappointment. And you also run the risk of bringing others into your suffering and creating unnecessary pain in innocent people’s lives.
He also wanted to get together with me, but I said no. And I said no because I have my own shit I’m working through, and his anger and bitterness wore me out. I know exactly how he feels because I experience the same pain continuously. But I also know that you have to put in the work. There is no magical deliverance from the pain of lost love. It’s a process that can take years and I may never get to the end before I die. And that’s OK. Because I’m putting one foot in front of the other and I’m doing the work because I’m worth it. Doing the work is what’s important. Even if I don’t get to complete healing, by pushing forward I’m constantly making progress in the right direction.
