Lasting Lessons | What I Learned In Loving the Person Who Didn’t Choose Me Back

*We are unlocking life and opening new doors | photo by jon tyson*

Listen | Journey Playlist for “What I Learned in Loving the Person Who Didn’t Choose Me Back”

As we’re passing Valentine’s Day and entering into Lenten season, there are a series of pieces that we’ll be sharing on loving, honoring, and releasing as ritual for healing and growth—renewed life.

This particular piece is an extended shout out for my experience of the person I reference in “What if you let Me have it?”, recognizing how meaningful and formative experiencing them has been on the past several years of my life, even though they were not similarly interested.*

How do we see and practice Love beyond and above the shallow narrowness of a society that says most love is meaningful and noteworthy only when it’s romantic, and fulfilled only because the folks get together?

Here’s what I’ve learned (so far).

1) We do not need to be with or “have” someone to honor and appreciate who they are—and what they help us learn about ourselves that we loved them in the first place.

This entire piece is about all of the lessons that I’ve learned about my life and relationships with one another because I was willing to see the person beyond what I wanted us to be together.

In my willingness to see them more than what I wanted or hoped for, I was able to recognize that one of the reasons their being so speaks to and fills my soul is because of how they exude love in everything they do.

And that made me begin to ask: How can I be more of that love? Where else does that love exist in the world that I can love and grow in, with, and because of it?

This is one of the most valuable things that I carry away and hold with me: Loving someone should help us love ourselves and one another more. Should make us desire to.

2) Be willing to receive and be honest that something truly matters to your soul—and go all in.

Not because we’re promised to have what we’re seeking if we do, but because of how much it matters to our soul means that we live our journey. Who and what most matter to us should matter enough for us to be willing to go all in and risk the “no.” Because if we don’t, the answer is already, “No.”

I mean, respect people and respect people’s boundaries. But be bold and go for it with all the gusto that it matters, if it truly matters.

How did I learn this? Because of how I witnessed myself always nervously dithering towards and around this person

Why was I doing this? Because it didn’t “make sense” to my asexual self that I think they’re the best of all the bee’s knees—I wanted a justification for what my soul knew and my heart wanted, but my mind didn’t yet understand.

And I realized that I do this throughout my entire life!

How could I develop my own person, my life, this nascent ministry and professional work, and I was always waiting for a grand signal that I was received, rather than first willing to declare who I am and what I desire?

That’s way too much power to and work on another person. I thank God every day that my soul chose someone who is both healthy and kind enough that they didn’t misuse it.

And. When we love, we have to love more than we’re afraid—for ourselves, for our lives, for one another.

We have to love more than we’re afraid, and go for love. We just do.

3) Be willing to move or shift for who and what you love (literally).

This kind of goes with the last one. I had someone ask me a couple of years ago if I would move (to another city) for a partner, and the womanist in me flinched when I remembered that, not too long before then, the confused feminist in me would ardently declare, “Of course not!”

But I now know that of course I would. And should. If I’m agreeing with someone as my partner, it’s because I truly love them that much and believe that we’re partners—not just “together.”

Love—with whomever or however it comes—is not and doesn’t happen everywhere. Personally, I can do my work anywhere.

I only knew that because, when I was asked this question, the person my soul loved so deeply flashed through my head and pushed everything else aside.

Deep, meaningful love just isn’t everywhere. If you believe you’ve found it, and it feels necessary, pack you ish and move.

4) Be willing to move or shift for who and what you love (figuratively).

Many of the ideals that we hold are intended to guide us, and we cling to them as hard, fast rules. They’re supposed to help us journey, and we put them in charge of us.

We know that this isn’t correct, because no person, space, or situation—ourselves included—can hit every ideal we hold.

So we should always be asking the question:

Is this person or opportunity enough? More than enough? Am I asking them or it to check every box—which no one and nothing can do—or does what they fulfill in fact accomplish enough that it’s a no-brainer for our soul that we go forward?

5) There are many times when circumstances hurt us, not people.

I’ve only even shared that this person exists with maybe eight(?) people. And the reason is because of the way that folks generally behave when we hear a relationship didn’t happen the way someone hoped: We start look for who is at fault or to blame.

It hurt my entire being that they didn’t choose me back. And—they didn’t hurt me. All they did was exercise their free will and choose to not engage in a relationship with me. That’s it. That’s all.

Because I have always been able to trust their heart and their spirit, I didn’t look to make it somehow someone’s fault--that’s how it worked out. That’s what happened.

Injustice and harm are real, so please don’t misapply this lesson and sustain harm to or from others. I had someone who wanted to be starting something as I was completing this piece. And after a brief pause discerned: No, this person is acting a whole fool, and this ish needs to stop. Being compassionate is not a pass for stupidity and foolishness.

And, in my experience of the main person about whom I’m writing, as well many other person-to-person encounters, it’s just life.

Which made me begin to ask throughout my life:

6) Where are spaces and times that I’ve blamed the other person(s) in a situation for how I felt, and it was truly or mostly simply the circumstances?

It turns out: Plenty. Even when another person is being crappy, I can quickly find underlying and even overwhelming circumstances that generated the situation. This question and outlook have helped me significantly to learn to grow my compassion.

There have been so many times since that I’ve been able to genuinely better see and meet the other person to try and sort through what’s occurring together. Because I’m now (somewhat) better at asking questions rather than making assumptions. And this is huge--I’m a writer with a vivid imagination, so the stories I tell from assumptions—even when I’m correct—often make the situation waaaayyy worse.

I’m better able, when someone else is committed with being an asshole, to assess whether or not my soul and well-being need to engage, or we can just keeping it moving (even if with a little side eye…).

And I’m better able to recognize when I’m part of the clownery—that I’m exacerbating the situation, blowing circumstances out of proportion, and even the root cause.

7) We should desire to love as much as we desire to be loved.

I was reticent to acknowledge my feelings for this person when I first realized them because I was healing from a previous relationship. As in, I had sequestered myself from cishet men (which I learned at the time is not a generally bad life practice…) because I wanted to focus on both healing from my experiences in the previous relationship, and understanding how I personally needed to grow.

Discovering that I was in love with someone in the midst of this was annoying. (Again: Asexual Spectrum. I simultaneously experience and process my feelings. Not always best, and still what it do. And it. Was. Annoying.)

That being said, I was incredibly excited about this specific person. (Have I mentioned before that I’m pretty certain they put the sun and the moon in the sky? No?)

But then I was afraid because I realized I was falling back into this unhealthy pattern of wanting to be loved and held up by them, and that be our relationship.

Which pushed me back towards understanding how important it is for me to keep growing in the love that I share with one another, and not just the love I want to receive.

The greatest and deepest loves are shared—not just given or received. And continuing to become healthy for myself, as well as in the hope of us, kept calling me into grounding my soul and heart in that belief and practice.

I think of this in every type of relationship now. How, as much as possible, are we sharing in love with one another? Can we move that more towards sharing if we’re not quite now? Some relationships can’t. The ones that simply won’t are not for me. Why? Because…

8) We all deserve to be loved as much as we desire to love.

I bless every human being who is able to hold space for folks who can’t love them back well.

I have so many family members (especially my older siblings and our cousins!), friends, mentors, and so on who have held space for me and held me in their hearts for years, before I ever understood what it even means to show up in love myself.

And that was even before I began my wobbly self-practice.

Everyone doesn’t have the capacity do this—it takes a deep well of groundedness in one’s own self-love and sense of belovedness to be able to hold with one another, when one another can’t hold back.

And part of the depth of that well comes from the few folks in our lives who may continually help fill us so that we can pour out with one another—because I have yet to experience any person who can hold space like this, who does it without their close crew.

For all of these folks who hold this space—for this person—I always pray and hope for them that they continue to find people who love them and pour into them as richly and deeply as they pour into the world.

And as I aspire to become one of these folks, I have to find my people who fulfill that for and with me. Who help me to better practice love on a regular basis.

So I wish this person whomever is that love for them. And I wish it for me, too.

I wish it for all of us.

*We are loving the experience of our existence—simply because we are. And our being is brilliant | photo by austin wade*

*For the folks who have tendency towards armchair psychology, no—this person who inspired this piece is not the same person from “Why I Broke Up with the Person I Wanted to Wanted to Spend My Life With.”