I ran into a Person in My Circle TM The Queen of Mediocretia the other day who told me how she’d gone to her twenty-five-year college reunion over the weekend. It had been so fun, she’d said, but – with a deep, dramatic sigh – she’d seen The Love of Her Life and that had been hard.
This was a very interesting comment, for several reasons. The first of which is that she is married and has children. Whatever – no judgement; the only people who know what a marriage is like are the people inside that marriage.
The other reason I found it interesting was that she said THE love of my life. As though this person was the one and only (and her husband was NOT the love of her life).
Personally, I don’t believe that there is just ONE person in the universe for you. (Mini Tangent: Perhaps incongruously, I do believe in soul mates. However, I believe in multiple soul mates, and I don’t necessarily believe that a soul mate has to be your spouse, or that a spouse has to be your soul mate. I have a former coworker who I consider to be my soul mate, even though there was never anything romantic between us, and even though I haven’t talked to her in far too many months. One of my best friends is another soul mate. My husband is a soul mate, too. I guess my definition of soul mate would be someone who knows some aspect of your heart so deeply, it feels like you are two halves of a whole.)
(I also have very strong feelings about how Hollywood/Disney/media-in-general portray love, and what it “should be” vs. what it IS. But that’s another topic for another day.)
Anyway, I think there are probably multiple people in the universe whom we could each call The Love of Our Lives.
Before I met my husband, I was in love twice. This surprises me, when I look back on it, because I had more than two boyfriends before I met my husband. And I certainly thought I was in love with more than two of those boyfriends when I was with them. I guess from this perspective, now that I know what love really is (or what love is to me, I guess), it’s easy to see which relationships qualified and which didn’t. The two I’m thinking of qualify because, I suppose, I think I could have seen myself building a life with either of them.
It’s interesting to think about how things might have turned out differently, had I pursued something more serious with either of those other loves. To be clear: I don’t pine for either of them, and honestly don’t even think of either of them very often, and I am quite pleased with how my life turned out, spouse-wise. (Also, I am quite pleased with how my life turned out, offspring-wise. If I’d married one of these other dudes, Carla wouldn’t exist and that is unthinkable.) But it is kind of a mind-pluck to think about what I would be doing, what life would be like, where I would be living, what my kids would be like had things gone a different way.
I haven’t heard from the one since shortly after I joined Facebook in 2008 (I still have an account but do not use it) and I haven’t heard from the other since we ran into each other during a college reunion nearly twenty years ago. Each of them got married, to the women they dated right after me, and I think at least one of them has a couple of children. From what I remember, one was living out West, in Idaho or Utah or Colorado; the other lived in a big city. I’m not sure what their status is these days. I suppose I could try to Facebook one or both of them, to see where they are and what they’re doing, but I am too lazy.
Now it’s your turn to weigh in:
Have you ever been in love? How many times? What’s your position on soul mates, and the concept of “one true love”? Do you ever think about “what might have been,” or where you would be now if you had made a different choice? Do you keep in touch with any former loves or would-be soul mates?
It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.