Notes on Love, After Everything
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Do you ever have certain lines from books just… lodge themselves in your brain? Not whole chapters, just a sentence or two that nestles in quietly, then suddenly reappears when you least expect it?
The summer before my (then) husband and I separated, I spent most days bouncing between our baby and snack duty for our son. Somewhere in the middle of all that, during one of those bleary 2 a.m. feedings with one eye open, I ordered a stack of books. Random titles that caught my eye in the moment.
When the box arrived, I cracked open The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg, and from the first page, I was hooked. She wrote so vividly about the tension between the comfort of her marriage and this new, unfamiliar desire waking up inside her. One line in particular stopped me: “It felt expansive. Expansive, a word I couldn’t remember ever using, not instinctively in my mouth.”
That word, expansive, hit me in a way I didn’t expect. It felt foreign and familiar all at once. I was reading it while rushing to get everyone dressed for dinner with extended family, but something about it stayed with me, like my own life was shifting, even if I couldn’t name it yet.
Fast forward to when I began dating my boyfriend. He was the first man I dated after my husband. While we have more in common than not, we’re the same age, both in the engineering world (he’s an engineer, I’m in marketing, just at different firms), we’re total opposites in some ways. He grounds my compulsion to constantly “do,” and I challenge him to be social. We are both passionate about music, him playing and me listening. We both enojy the outdoors. Howwever, I could spend hours outside taking it all in, starting at the same scenic view, while he prefers to explore. I think he genuinely enjoys the bit of razmataz I bring to the relationship, and I’ve come to really appreciate his steadiness. I process verbally; he is quiet and pensive. And yet, to borrow Molly’s word, it’s felt nothing short of expansive. Our relationship feels safe, but dynamic.
Still, entering into a new relationship after divorce was incredibly difficult for me. I genuinely believed, for thirteen years, that my ex and I would be together for our entire lives and the grief from that loss still occasionally undoes me. It’s ending shattered my fairytale understanding of love as easy or effortless, and made me acutely aware of how easily it can slip away unnoticed. Back at the start of my new relationship, I alternated between trying to sabotage it, protecting myself from another heartbreak, and doing everything I could to preserve its magic. Through a lot of work, and a good deal of trial and error, (we did break up for a while before getting back together) we made it through a challenging start and have built a foundation that feels full of possibility. While my boyfriend and I are not following a traditional template, we’re both committed to creating a meaningful relationship. I’m grounded by, and admittedly amazed, by the way we’ve been able to show up for each other and our partnership. Below, I’ve gathered the five most poignant lessons about love and relationships that I’ve learned post-divorce:
Leave space for curiosity
In Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel talks about the natural inclination to “create closeness in our relationships, to bridge the space between our partner and ourselves,” in an effort to create a sense of security. As she explains it, this false belief that you can fully know another person, or what the future hold, can actually strangle the energy of a relationship. “In order to commune with the one we love, we must be able to tolerate this void and its pall of uncertainties,” she writes. Mari Ruti puts it poignantly in her book, The Summons of Love, “The sense of safety that we often crave in our relationships is always, to some extent, illusory, calculated to cover over the heart-sinking realization that the minute we allow another person to become precious to us, we must admit that key components of our universe might one day come tumbling down.” Keeping this awareness, that the other person, and the future, is always unknowable and precious, at the forefront allows space for a much deeper appreciation of the other.
Be aware of relational templates
During the process of my divorce, a long-buried narrative that I’m inherently unlovable nudged its way to the surface. I had previously managed the painful belief through perfectionism, but as I entered a new relationship amid major life changes, I had a difficult time keeping up the facade. As my boyfriend fell in love with me, I felt unworthy and precarious in the relationship, convinced he would inevitably realize I’m the worst and leave. (It’s common enough to be cliché, and explained on an episode of New Girl in the term “white fanging”. But in the moment, it feels overwhelmingly real.) These days, I’m actively working on radical self-love and true self-compassion, but old relational templates die hard, so I have to work to maintain an awareness of the emotional pull, so that it doesn’t pull me under.
It goes without saying that my boyfriend comes with his own relational templates, and understanding these parts of each other is core to navigating, and even rewiring, ourselves as partners and individuals.
Not all conflict is bad
Some of my favorite aspects of our relationship are the ways my boyfriend and I differ. It brings contrast, richness, and perspective. But I’ll be honest: those same differences can sometimes feel challenging. In the beginning, our disagreements felt like warning signs, and I feared they meant we weren’t right for each other. Over time, though, I’ve come to see that differences and conflict, when handled with care, can actually be a sign of growth. Have you heard the phrase “rupture and repair”? Meaning moments of tension followed by intentional reconnection. These moments aren’t just inevitable; they’re meaningful. They offer a chance to deepen trust and understand each other more fully. Virginia Goldner describes this beautifully when she contrasts the “flaccid safety of tepid cohabitation” with a “dynamic safety” built through risk, rupture, and the courage to reconnect.
It’s not always easy, but I’ve learned that disagreement doesn’t have to mean disconnection. When we approach conflict with empathy and respect, it can become something generative a way to keep our relationship vibrant, honest, and alive.
Make time for play
Similar to rest, play has always felt frivolous to me, but, surprise, it’s anything but. When I’m with my boyfriend, we lean into it hard. A few weeks ago, what started as a simple dinner date in Tower turned into one of the most joy-filled nights we've had. First stop: Dinner at a new to us spot. The food was delicious and the vibe of the restaurant was so good. We didn’t know where we were going after that but ended up at Goldstein’s. A pop-punk cover band was playing, and I knew every word to every song. We sang, we felt like elder millenials, we were totally in our element. It was pure magic. Then, on a whim, we wandered over to Strummers and stumbled into a full-on Bad Bunny DJ night. The funny thing is that we only knew two of his songs between the two of us. But did that stop us? Not even close. We danced, drank, danced again, and we still talk about how much fun that night was. None of it was planned, except dinner, but that’s kind of the point. Some of our best moments happen when we’re just out in the world, playing together in whatever way the night unfolds. Remind me to tell you about the trampoline in his backyard…
How you are and what you do
This may be more personal than universal, but as someone who has always felt more comfortable doing than being, I’ve always sought-out partners who enjoyed doing the same checklist of things I do. Entertaining, watching sports, being outside, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this, but for me, it means that I was oriented to believe that, so long as we were doing those activities, things were good. The “work” in the relationship centered on keeping things good, rather than also creating space to accept things, and ourselves, as they are. When my ex-husband and I encountered our first real obstacle we had little foundation for getting through the “muck” together, as Cheryl Strayed writes, and things fell apart quickly. My boyfriend and I do a lot of fun things together, but we also take time to just be. Allowing space for sadness and discomfort also allows for deeper joy, in the relationship and in life.
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Note. This was a scary post to write, for its vulnerability. That being said, I wish I had known about the “work” that goes into love earlier, and had been able to see how romantic it actually is to put effort into a union with the person you love. I’m still learning, and I would love to hear from all of you, since relationships are endlessly complicated and fascinating. What do you think? What lessons have you learned in love?
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