Let me tell you the story of how I finally got over my fear of commitment; or as I like to call it “How I learned to let go and learned to love the bomb.”
I grew up watching a woman lay down and die when her husband died. It shaped my entire identity from an early age. Abuse, starvation, constant moving, roach infested homes until I ended up in foster care. It shaped me to to think the only person in life I could truly count on was myself. The idea of a partnership scared me. I was determined to make sure I was in control of my destiny and I would never allow myself to become a simpering baby trapped by a man.
I had never been taught what a normal and healthy relationship looked like until I was 14, when I had wonderful foster parents who loved each other. But my foster mom was a stay at home mom. I love that she found something that made her happy, but it was terrifying to me. It reminded me of how easily things could go wrong if someone died. That fear of widowhood kept me frozen. The fear of not being in control, losing myself in someone and then being left alone. A young girl with very few healthy examples of a love that worked where both people are happy (not even on TV. Dawson’s Creek I am looking in your direction) had no idea how to navigate any kind of feelings, let alone that of a young man madly in love.
I’ve mentioned before, but my beloved fiancé asked me to be his wife when I was 19. A literal baby.
Actually, it was more like told me he was going to marry me. My response was what you would come to expect from me; I laughed. I told him about my goals and he swore he’d change my mind. Instead we broke up and I spent an entire weekend sobbing in my bed wondering where it all went wrong. I let those doubts creep into my mind every day as I grieved my first serious heartbreak. In the weeks that followed, we became friends and I threw myself headfirst into a relationship with a charismatic narcissist. I accepted the love I thought I deserved. I endured years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. When I finally escaped, I married someone out of guilt and obligation. I was blessed with my kids, but how many times did I imagine just running with them into the night and never looking back so I could be free of the abuse and sadness and just take care of everyone on my own? The cycle of abuse returned and I was thrown into walls, pinned down and spit on. I was called names, had my darkest fears thrown in my face, and when I escaped again; I was tired. I entered on and off relationships, dates casually until finally I decided I loved myself enough to love only my kids and protect my heart from breaking.
I didn’t know what romantic love should feel like. I didn’t know what it looked like. I didn’t know how to love myself. I only knew how to write and love my kids. I knew how not to be a mom from bad examples; my own mother. Never would I be like her. I knew how to learn to love myself. But I didn’t know what love looked like or how it should feel even though it kept slapping me in the face.
Throughout all of it, my ex boyfriend/best friend loved me and I refused to see it. I was afraid to see it. But he was steadfast in his love for me. He didn’t get mad that I married someone else after saying no to him. He met a wonderful woman and got married himself. While we were married to other people, he was my dearest friend. We spoke every day. He gave me advice. He told me to protect my beautiful heart from men who would break it (something he still regretted). We sent the other’s kids’ gifts. We were in each other’s corners. We were always there for each other any way we needed to be. Through divorces and recovery and mental health challenges. Even when I moved across the country, we were always there for each other. I didn’t realize that love was as simple as a person who showed up.
In the years that followed, I learned that love was about persistence. Love was the same boy, now a man, whose marriage had fallen apart, as he and his wonderful ex wife grew into different, but still incredible people.
That man once again asked me to be his wife. There was no laughing this time. There was fear. Fear of moving to a small town. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of losing my dearest friend. This time there was no laughter; there was only no. But I learned that love continues to show up. It was love that took him to work a 12 step program and embrace recovery; love for me and his family. It was love that gave me the ring made from a long ago promise to hold until he got on one knee and I stopped saying no (until it got stolen). It was designed after the one he said he would get me as an engagement ring when we were kids. He said it would be a placeholder until I was ready to say yes.
It was the absence of love for himself that kept him in a situation where he placated an abuser (whom was always meant to be a short term fling to get back on the saddle post divorce. For two years, when I’d ask if he was happy, he’d tell me no; he didn’t love her. Couldn’t stand her. His heart was mine alone. But if he tried to leave her she would turn violent and he was afraid she would harm his family). For two years he reminded me almost daily that when he was finally in a position to get out and away from her safely, he’d fly here and get down on one knee and this time, I wouldn’t say no. The abuse got so out of hand, he couldn’t speak to me for a year, and yet I somehow knew he wasn’t gone from my life forever.
But it wasn’t his love for me that helped him finally free himself from that abuse; it was the love for his family and a desire to be a good son and father. It was love for himself that took him to therapy. Love for me was what made him humble himself to call and apologize for disappearing, even though it wasn’t on him.
It was love who accepted a third no when I told him I was incapable of being with anyone; I was too damaged and too set in my ways. The truth is that I didn’t know what it meant to love someone other than my children. I just assumed I didn’t deserve love. But he was showing me what love was; commitment, communication, working to be better for someone other than yourself. It was persistence and patience and bravery. It was love that made him keep his word, overcome his fear of flying and love brought him here. Love was the reason he promised we could divide our time and I could remain in the mountains, because a week every other month was still better than any other woman on Earth. Love was enough; I was enough. I finally understood what it should feel like to be loved by someone. That’s why when he asked for a fourth time there was no laughing or running. I jumped and down and clapped. There was only yes.
I was afraid of commitment, because I was never committing to him. It wasn’t the act I feared; it was to whom. I didn’t know what it meant to be loved by someone, but I sure as shit knew what it didn’t feel like. I knew what it didn’t look like. I knew it wasn’t in my marriage or anywhere else so I finally stopped looking. I found it in a pair of hazel eyes that stare so deeply into my own that I feel like we are one person. I hated myself so much that I couldn’t see how much he loved me. I didn’t see how seamlessly he’d stepped into the role of stepparent; so much so that my youngest two refer to him as their dad. I was trying so hard not to be helpless like my mom that I didn’t see that someone could love you and let you be free to do your own thing. I get to be myself in my most authentic form while also loved by a man who has made it as clear as day that I am his only choice. It was never about the act of getting married; it was that I was meant to build a life with him, and by doing that, I’m not afraid anymore.
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The Misadventures of MHC 