It's Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak into Happily Never After (9 page)

And now, about ten months later, in an ironic twist, the same man I fell in love with at first sight has me drowning in wine-filled tears and scarfing down sesame chicken (and popcorn). Ugh, if only I was Olivia Pope. I can picture her pointing her finger at me and scolding me, “Girl, what were you thinking!” And she’d be right. But I wasn’t thinking, I was feeling. Isn’t that what we all do as we fall in love? Check our mind at the door and let our heart blindly lead the way? I should have known it was too good to be true. All of it. How quickly we fell in love, how fast our relationship moved, how perfect everything felt.

It’s impossible in these early days not to reminisce about the past, especially the good times. Why is it that when we feel pain, our brains automatically forget about the bad times that brought us to this point? Because just like love is blind, so is heartbreak. By blindly reminiscing about the good times in our relationship, we make ourselves feel even worse than we already do. We make ourselves feel guilty as we think of the things we could have done differently and what we should have done but didn’t. But you shouldn’t ponder on the could haves because the reality is, if they should have, they would have, but they didn’t. For now, you have to force yourself to be what you’ve been taught your whole life not to be . . . a pessimist. The fond memories can be remembered later, when you’ve gotten past the point of no return and successfully (and healthily) moved on from your relationship. But that’s in the distant future (sorry to say). Your present task is to remind yourself why you are where you are. And let me tell you, honey, you ain’t moping around eating sesame chicken because the shit was good.

And the shit wasn’t good for one of two reasons: either it wasn’t
really
love or it was
only
love.

It wasn’t
really
love:

Think of this as perceived love. Sure, right now you might think it was real love, we all do. You wouldn’t be hurting this bad if it wasn’t, right? But what is
real
love, anyway? Think about that for a moment. If you actually paused and decided what qualities define a person whom you really love, would your ex make the cut?

Time to find out. . . . Grab a paper and a pen. Start by writing down anything that comes to mind when you ask yourself:
What do you love in a man?
Don’t think about your ex, just think about visions of your future soul mate.

For example:

I love a man who . . .

• 
Has a good sense of humor, preferably dry and dirty

• 
Will be a good father

• 
Trusts me

• 
Believes in me

• 
Loves his family, and mine

• 
Lets me talk for hours about nothing important

• 
Knows I will overanalyze every situation

• 
Has guy friends

• 
Isn’t known around town as a douche bag

• 
Is ambitious

• 
Is a manly man (can use a hammer and a chainsaw)

• 
Thinks I’m pretty, even with no makeup on

• 
Is affectionate

• 
Is physically attractive

• 
Accepts my flaws

Now, let’s compare your list to your ex. How’d he score? Not well, I’m guessing. Sure, your ex possesses some of those qualities, otherwise what the hell were you doing with him in the first place? But can you honestly say that your ex embodies the majority of the qualities you listed? I’m not suggesting you go around dating with a checklist, but perhaps reminding yourself of what you envision love to be allows you to see, not what you or your relationship was lacking, but what
he
was. And by doing so you come to the ultimate conclusion that it wasn’t really love to begin with. In which case, congratulations, you’ve just cut your recovery time in half.

It was
only
love:

You’ve made your list and he passes with flying colors—now what? How do you reconcile the pain that comes with a real love that didn’t work out? Logic says if you truly love someone and they truly love you back, then everything should work out. But, the truth is, the Beatles had it all wrong when they sang, “All you need is love.” (Sorry, Dad, I’m not hating on the Beatles, I swear.) Because, as much as we want to believe in the romantic idea that love is all you need, it’s simply not true. Love is not enough to make a lifelong relationship work. You can’t expect to love someone and therefore you will spend the rest of your life with them, because life isn’t that simple. Instead, love is more like your base. Like the key ingredient to a perfect recipe. You see, you don’t just bake a cake with flour and nothing else. It may be the most important ingredient, but you still need a little sugar, some baking powder, and a few eggs among other things. And just like a relationship, where love is the main ingredient, there has to be a little compromise, some support, and a few moments of tolerance as well. It just doesn’t work if all you have is love. And your relationship ending is proof of that.

Whether it wasn’t really love or it was only love that described your relationship, it doesn’t change the outcome that it’s over. But it does put things into perspective, at least enough to make you stop reminiscing about the past like it was filled with the best moments of your life. Instead, realize that in hindsight, those moments probably weren’t worth all the hype you gave them. Which makes them that much easier to forget about.

Lesson learned:
When it comes to Love 101, if he fails the test, he fails the course!

I
t’s almost 2:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. This tossing and turning in my bed has become a nightly ritual, but tonight it’s worse than ever. And I’m thinking it has everything to do with the dreadful fact that tonight I finally decided to take off my engagement ring and have no intention of ever putting it back on.

This isn’t the first time I’ve taken my ring off, but I know deep down that this time it’s off for good. The first time it happened was months ago, back in late September. We were in New York City attending a charity event when we got in a huge fight. I was talking to a guest at the event, who happened to be a man, when Number Twenty-Six pulled me aside and told me how disrespectful I was being. I explained to him with a laugh that I was actually talking to the guy because he wanted me to set him up with a nice girl, and I had just the right one in mind for him. Despite my laugh, he didn’t think it was very funny. And after he told me I was acting like a “whore,” I didn’t find it funny either. Needless to say, the rest of the night was filled with tension, which turned into a massive fight the moment we returned to our hotel room. Behind closed doors, we shouted in fury at one another until he held out his hand and I placed my engagement ring into his open palm.

We went to bed in silence. As he slept, I wept quietly before finally getting up and going for a walk in the city. Dawn was breaking, and with a few hours to spare before a car was scheduled to pick us up and take us to the airport, I found myself walking aimlessly through Times Square alone, shielding my tears behind dark sunglasses. I didn’t know where I wanted to go; I just knew I didn’t want to go back to the hotel room.

As I strolled the side streets, I came upon an open church. I walked up the steps and inside to sit in the first pew that didn’t have someone sleeping on it, and I looked up in amazement at the architectural ceiling and beautiful stained-glass windows. There I was sitting in a pew, alone in a random church in the middle of New York City as I cradled my head in my hands and began to sob.

And for the first time, I thought,
I don’t think we’re going to make it.

With little time to spare, I pulled myself together and dashed back to the hotel. Twenty-Six asked where I’d been, and I told him I had just gone for a walk. We got into the car and rode to the airport in silence.

We stayed silent as we got on the plane. It wasn’t until takeoff that he leaned into me and whispered in my ear that he was sorry. I looked at him to find tears rolling down his face. I had never seen him cry. Without hesitation, I wrapped my arms around him and began crying as well. It had been one of the worst fights we’d ever had, but I wasn’t ready to lose him and he wasn’t ready to lose me either. He reached into the zippered front pouch of his carry-on and pulled out the ring. As he slipped it back on my finger, it was as if we were getting engaged all over again. There was no speech, no bending on one knee, and no cameras. This time, it was just the two of us, sitting on a plane bound for home; we had hit the Reset button on our relationship and this was a new beginning, a beginning that would take the love we had for one another and leave behind the drama of the show and the insecurities that came with it. It was our first real breakup-and-makeup, but as time would tell, it wouldn’t be the last.

Now, my left hand feels as empty as my heart and brings with it a bag of mixed emotions. On one hand, the shallow part of me will miss the ring terribly, since I have to return it per the rules of the show. I practically designed the thing by dropping hints to producers daily about what I wanted. I shouldn’t even call them hints, considering I was pretty precise in describing my wishes: round, halo, and big. And that’s exactly what it was! The moment I first laid eyes on that ring I knew it was meant for me and only me, just like the man who was giving it to me.

But now I see that the ring and the man are a package deal; the only way the ring makes sense is when the man makes sense. You don’t want one without the other, regardless of how beautiful (and big) it is. As I look at my left finger, I have to admit that I feel queasy seeing the tan line my ring has made. My bare finger serves as tangible proof of my embarrassment. And I wonder if people notice immediately that the ring is gone. Will they pretend to check out my manicure just to get a glimpse of my naked finger? But most of all, there’s a feeling of sorrow that comes with parting ways with this ring, because it’s not just parting ways with a piece of jewelry. No, it’s more than that. It’s parting ways with my relationship.

It’s interesting how a keepsake like that can make letting go so much harder. I never really had a problem moving on from relationships in the past; after all, my past led me to being able to fall in love with a complete stranger in just eight weeks. I admit it’s completely and utterly batshit crazy not only to fall in love but also to get engaged in such a short amount of time. Trust me, if a friend of mine told me she was engaged to someone she’d met on TV two months ago, I would Google the closest psych ward and enroll her in it immediately. But having done just that, I’ve changed my tune, partly because I don’t want to be committed, but mostly because, despite being the skeptic that I am, I actually did it. Though not alone—no, I did it with the help of a perfect storm that had everything to do with my past meeting the present and producing my future. (Well, short-term future.)

Oh my past . . . Deep breath! Here we go.

Growing up I had been through plenty of boyfriends, as I became somewhat of a serial dater once I reached eighteen. The late age wasn’t by choice but rather because nobody seemed to want to date me prior to that. I had grown up with the same group of people since fifth grade when my parents moved us from one suburb outside Atlanta to another just seven miles down the road. While the steadiness of living in the same place for a decade made for everlasting friendships, it wasn’t great for my love life. I wasn’t necessarily a “guy’s girl,” but I was flat chested, sporty, abrasive, and living among daintily prim and proper girls who, unlike myself, didn’t quit cotillion after two days. I wasn’t the steady girlfriend type, apparently, but I wasn’t the whore type either, and with all the boys calling me by my last name or “the Dorf,” I was living every teenage girl’s nightmare . . . in the friend zone.

So when I ventured off to college at Louisiana State University (Geaux Tigahs!), I was bursting at the seams to get a boyfriend. I went to a school far enough away to start fresh, but close enough to be only a road trip away from home. Plus, the fact that I was going to an SEC school appeased my father enough to continue bankrolling this four-year excursion of mine. I had kept all of my friends from home, but I was determined to break free of the “friend” stigma and finally become viable dating material.

After pledging a sorority and taking advantage of my sister’s fake ID, I found myself with a starter boyfriend. He just so happened to be the quarterback of the football team, though not the starter. That relationship lasted all of a few months, if that, and to be honest, I use the word “relationship” pretty loosely considering we never had the exclusivity talk. I downplay this relationship because after we broke up, I started dating his friend, who later became his roommate. Oops! It wasn’t as weird as it seemed, considering our fling was brief and I ended up dating the second guy for the remaining three years of college.