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Chapter 3: Limited love vs true love.
I just checked the oven, and the chicken its baking lovely. When it’s done I’ll slide in the homemade mac and cheese. I’m monitoring the stovetop as my kale cooks down. The entire apartment frankly, smells delicious. I am beaming checking the time every so often, monitoring when his train gets in.
The highlight of my day was getting home from work to cook for him. Well for us rather. This isn’t an infomercial about being obedient to your man. This chapter isn’t brought to you by Submissive Sistas Incorporated. But there is something about making someone else feel good because you want to, not because you’re trying to prove your worth that just feels.
Real. Like love.
I’ve got to admit, a confession if you will, I have always been a lover girl. Whether I was in high school crushing on a senior, or in college in my on again off again relationship, or during my self-proclaimed single phase when I was dealing with a friend who was more than just a friend.
I have always been a hopeless romantic.
The kind who hopes that each person I date is the one. I used to travel and say, I fell in love just a little bit with anyone I met. Whether for a weekend, or 3 months, or 3 years I made a love story out of every story.
Most times it worked for me. I was always one of the more memorable people in the lives of those I interacted with. Sometimes it didn’t, decisions I made at 23 are the reason I’m in therapy at 28. Usually the choices I made all boiled down to the same thing: I yearned to feel love.
I also wanted to give it, most times I’d find myself in the predicament that I was giving it to everyone but myself. In fact had I fallen in love with me sooner I may have saved myself a lot of heart break. In the end I’d keep the same pattern, meet someone, connect with them, find their flaws, try to change them, try to be worth them changing themselves, and then realize people don’t change at all.
Change is hard, I’m almost 30 and I still bite my nails, how the hell did I think I was gonna get some 20 something to stop being toxic, talk to his dad, and not take me for granted? I just always saw the good in people, their potential. It also helped that I brought out the good in them too. I made them soft, I had this ability to train people to do right, even if it was just for a little while. So love to me, came as an obligation. An expectancy. And when I wasn’t receiving it at its full capacity that I knew I deserved I moved on.
I cried. Barely ate. Lost 10 pounds. Found a new artist to obsess over.
And moved on, and met someone new.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Though it has brought me a million stories to tell my bratty grandkids 40 years from now, it also taught me a reality I don’t think most people are aware of.
Bell Hooks said it in All About Love, and it reigns true.
You will connect with so many people in this lifetime, but rarely will people actually experience true love.
Fairytales tells us, that its your high school sweetheart, or that person you met randomly at a bar and made an instant connection with, maybe it’s your old friend who you rekindled with. Most times we’re taught that when you meet them you just know. It’s this smooth sailing type of love that lasts forever.
That’s true, and then it isn’t.
I’ve seen people who met at 19 and have been together ever since. I met people who met at 40 and fell in love like teenagers. I also have met people who spent decades together, missing out on something, because it was safe and familiar.
If you’re anything like me, your person was there all along, but it wasn’t your time, and they’re this reminder that life provides bigger things than what we see happening in our every day, and it showed itself by bringing you together.
Whatever or however it happens, there is a substantial difference between limited love and true love, and its really difficult to tell unless you’ve experienced both.
I’m going to tell you about a couple limited loves that I would have banked forever on. That is, before I met my true love.
My therapist and Sza tell me I need to stop living in the past. To be present. But I have to go back every so often to remind myself that every version of who I was deserved love, and just because I am at one of the best versions of me now, doesn’t mean I got their without the previous versions help.
After settling with my current partner there was a while, where I was hellbent on punishing myself for loving anyone else, for experiencing anyone else. How come I couldn’t have gotten it right on the first try? Well for one, I am not sure who I would be, if I hadn’t met these people, I don’t know the partner I’d be, the writer I’d be, they all impacted me. More importantly, each version of Ivana took these relationships seriously. She loved them in some capacity or another. The only difference now is that the Ivana now loves herself in every capacity, and is with someone who she would love regardless of the outcome. Unconditionally. But we, both Ivana’s, wanted the same things, and though time has made it hard to remember, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. When I was in limited love it felt, like potential permanence. I met people who were good people who meant well, but flawed. A boy who was angry with his mother for not being able to care for him the way she shared for his younger brother. The result was a boy who grew to a man who prepared himself to be alone, just in case. Who blundered opportunities and blamed it on the world, who didn’t feel like he deserved me, and reminded me of it constantly vocally, and always coming up just short. Little did he know he was only proving my point that if I could just care about him enough, help him enough, want the best for him enough. That that would be enough.
After we ended I felt like I was one step closer, I had learned a little bit more I had become a bit stronger. I was more than broken hearted at that time, a feeling that seems so foreign now, I had to learn how to detach from him, from all of it, our connection, the adjustments I was willing to make. Step mother, second wife, different culture. At the time it all seemed worth it.
He seemed worth it.
After our break up, I was devastated, but hopeful.
I met a boy, who had it all, older, by about 8 years. Kind smile, independent, stubborn, and reserved. We imbedded within each other so smoothly. There was so much light that I wasn’t equipped for the darkness, that usually showed itself early on, or at least I couldn’t detect it. He’d experienced loss I couldn’t comprehend. It turned him cold, and when I felt that, I didn’t know what to do with it. Our communication was ego driven, on both sides. If we could get past this, then maybe we could have made it work. He kept the door open, checking in every so often, but the final time I told him I’d moved on, and our communication wouldn’t be appropriate. He was the first person I truly wished well, after lots of reflection, he wasn’t so bad, so mean, just misunderstood. He’d make someone happy one day, if he got out of his own way.
Even when I was younger. 17 and in hopelessly in love with a boy who I swore was forever. For years we tried. Our love fierce and codependent.
I was his prize and he was my guarantee.
Much like the others, I woke up and we fizzled. It was a pattern. Thinking back, I was so young. And so was he. In hindsight, there were so many mistakes I made. I wince every so often when I think of them. Times I said things, or lied, moments I should have ended it for good, or allowed him too. He helped me more than he knows. I am kinder now, more understanding, I am warmer, patient. I don’t know if I would have been if it wasn’t for him.
And in each of these stories they all felt so, permanent. A life I could have adjusted to, bent for, fit into. Every fight hurt like a hundred knives, every kiss felt warm and kind, every moment of laughter that had faded over the years brings me a faint smile. But it wasn’t until now, till I met my true love that I realized each moment was special, but not like this.
The difference is a feeling I never had before.
It takes everything I value and puts it into one sweet spot for safe keeping. True love is different than limited love for the obvious reason: time. Not necessarily time spent, but how the time is spent. True love, is a choice for starters. Too say you “fell in love” is a disservice to your mind. It gives yourself such little credit for the decisions you make, and the life you’ve lived to be able to determine what’s best for you. True love is kind, its understanding, it’s the sign you’ve met your match, and you are willing to stay long enough to see it through.
True love makes you want to be better, a better lover, partner, person. I’ve dated men before who told me that I was too good for them, it wasn’t till I met the person who made me question myself and being good enough for them, that I realized what a lonely disheartening feeling that is. I almost feel sorry for anyone that felt that way when it came to me if they we’re right.
True love though, reminds me that fate exists. That you can have a million experiences or no experiences and regardless you won’t feel like you’re missing anything else when you finally find this love.
I met my boyfriend when I was 12 years old. He won’t believe it, but I remember us in the 6th grade. I remember him turning around and talking to me. His small fro, his small everything. He was short okay?! I remember us exchanging numbers, growing up and texting daily. I remember sharing my secrets with this quiet observant boy. I remember passing notes, telling him that we could go to prom together if we didn’t meet anyone else worth going with. In return, less than a year later, he asked me to prom in a long letter that he mailed. I was one of the first girls asked. He didn’t even take chance of anyone else asking me.
He saw me before I saw myself.
Back then, I should have known that it was end game. Gosh if we knew, maybe he would have followed me to DC. Maybe we would have moved in after college, started our story earlier. But that isn’t what happened. Divine Timing is real and God doesn’t make mistakes.
After prom we went our separate ways, we didn’t talk often. I started dating a boy to old for me, he fell in love with a girl in Missouri.
Years later, we met again, fell back into that familiar pattern of protection, and intrigue we had with each other.
We dated for a few months. At the time, I was surrounded by grief from family loss, he was lost from confusion of what he was doing next with his life.
It just wasn’t the right time.
But we would still talk, not talk like holding the door open, we’d talk like the conversation you have with an old friend, where you want to know all about what your missing. Where whatever they tell you, you hope that they’re okay. He always made me chuckle, and more than anything he made me feel safe.
Safe to just be myself, that it was enough.
He was the same boy who handed me his headphone to listen to Frank Ocean in class. He told me about true crime podcasts. In return I made him laugh, shared predicaments I found myself in, asked him questions about life that I’m not sure anyone had bothered to inquire his opinion about before.
I had learned to love him in every way there was to love a person. And one day, we rekindled again, this time our talks were longer, he stuck around for a while. I was more open to his company than I had been before.
When I was healthier, when he was where he wanted to be financially. We were ready. We found each other.
At least that’s what I say, sometimes though I think it is something way bigger than that. Like God decided, that this was our time. There’s this theory that we have a red ribbon that ties us to someone else, they’re usually so close we have no idea. The kid in our science class, the person from our karate summer camp, the RA from your college dorm, the person who you’ve seen at least 5 times in the grocery store, I mean to the point where you might as well just say hello.
And when it’s time the string connects you and ties you together.
Your person. Your true love.
No second guessing. No doubt. No strain. No confusion. Just people who know they’ve got something life impacting in front of them. A gift that you can’t put a price on.
We’re opposites. He and i. I am loud and bold, emotional and intense. Passionate in every decision I make. He is calm and knowing. Logical and stern. We balance each other out, stealing bits of one another when it benefits our lives apart. He understands me and I accept him. Compromise without coercion.
I’m sure true love for others is different. People so similar and so in sync. Made for each other. Some who evolve into being an imperfectly perfect fit.
Our story is just one combination of many.
I’m not sure when I realized our love was different. I woke up one day and noticed I hadn’t had a love like this before. A friend like this. A partner like this. A person like this. I decided every morning to love this man, in any capacity that God allowed.
That’s what made me realize this love as a true one.
Yes there is love that when you feel it times stops. Love that is so intense that it feels like doors being ripped off the hinges when you embrace them. Love that hurts. That makes you argue. Love that feels instant. That feels like ecstasy.
Maybe you’ll experience all of these. That doesn’t mean they are your true love.
Your true love, is the person that makes every experience you had just a little more sweeter. The nights in your apartment a bit more pleasant. The office work parties a bit more tolerable. The winter a little less cold. They challenge you to be better. They know you because they want to. I treasure all the other limited experiences I have had, don’t get me wrong, but they just aren’t like this.
This walk in love with this person who means so much to me that the perfectionist in me has wracked my brain trying to figure out a way to love him sooner. I think about every life I’ve lived before, how our paths crossed, and every life after that and in between, how to love him faster.
More importantly though I remind myself of the importance of loving him now. And loving myself. He makes me want to be a better woman for me, especially if it results in being a better woman for him. It also makes me understand that true love though it is beautiful and rare doesn’t mean it is permanent.
Limited love is love that is supposed to be cut short, it is love that you are going to have because you are supposed to make a difference in someone else’s life and vice versa. Whether for a few years or a night to remember. The purpose is the inevitable ending or a bond that is only meant to reach a certain capacity. True love is love that changes you. It highlights all the good things about you that deserve to stay the same. It doesn’t mean its forever. Sometimes we choose against true love, out of fear, feeling of unworthiness, impatience. It doesn’t mean our life is any less beautiful, maybe we choose someone else, maybe we don’t have a choice at all. Maybe we choose an option that just seems more feasible, less risky. We pick a love that’s limited in experience rather than time. True love though, it may not be guaranteed forever but its just meant for you to experience to know its real.
What I do know, is what I learned from crying, fighting, dancing, laughing, chasing, settling, learning.
True Love taught me what I value: safety, comfort, honesty, growth…best of all me.
I don’t have to be so afraid of anything else, because I got to experience something and someone so pure that everything somehow some way is going be okay
I don’t believe I’d ever experience a love like this again, so I treasure it now and use every moment that brought me here as way to make it the best love it can be for the both of us.
I hope if you haven’t already, you get to experience it too.
