Love is Not Supposed to Hurt

Six. That's how many times I failed at romantic love before I finally got it right. But the good news is, I did get it right. Five. That's how many decades it took before I discovered what true love feels like. Love is not supposed to hurt. If there's pain involved, then it's not love; it's indifference, neglect or abuse.

He left the day I was born. The birth of his daughter meant nothing to him. And he never looked back, except for that one day in August, 1963, when I turned eighteen--the day he was finally free of child support. He boldly walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the door of the stranger's house. When I opened the door, he asked if I was Carol Louise, and when I said I was, he threw back his shoulders, smiled broadly, and boasted "I'm your father and here is your last support check." Then he turned abruptly and walked back down the sidewalk, climbed into his car, and drove away.

With his $10.00 check in my hand, I closed the door and walked over to the couch and sat down. What had just happened? At first I was in disbelief and stunned. Since I had been a little girl, I had looked for my father everywhere I went. For a reason I didn't understand, he was distant, aloof, and mysterious, but he loved me from afar. He was standing back in the crowd when I hit that home run; he was on the sidelines when my team--I was the fastest runner--won the track meet, he was sitting in the bleachers at my high school graduation. Because he was there watching me, I worked harder than anyone else. I had to make him proud of me. I couldn't let him down.

None of it was true. He never was standing back watching his daughter. He knew nothing about me. He even had to ask if I was Carol Louise. He didn't even know what I looked like. Sadness overwhelmed me and I fell back on to the couch and sobbed uncontrollably.

When I sat back up I was angry--angry at my father but now all men* were guilty by association. Beware of men; they are dangerous purveyors of pain.

Up until this point in my life, I had been groomed to be "sugar and spice and everything nice." Little boys like sweet nice girls, I was reminded over and over. There was no place for anger in my persona.  If I felt it, I couldn't express it; I had to suppress it. Feel one way; act another. This was my mother's way, and this would be passed down to all three of her daughters: Judy, Carol Louise, and Lynnette. But there was something else, something more sinister than sugar and spice, that mother passed down to my sisters and me: women cannot survive without a man to take care of them.

At age twenty, when I fell in love for the first time, I believed two things: 1) men are purveyors of pain, and 2) I must find a man to take care of me.

Enter Jack. Jack had a plan but I wasn't privy to that plan; it was a secret plan, so therefore, since it was secret, I didn't know there was even a plan. But let's just say that plan involved control, manipulation, game playing, and doing the nasty-nasty with my best friend. But since I knew two things: I needed a man to care for me and love comes with pain, I stayed with Jack, until...

Enter Evansville. Another man who wanted 100% control over things that he believed were in my best interest in life and, of course, there was the pain. But this pain was self-inflicted, and you can read all about that in my prior posts about my escape to Europe to deal with, well, that pain.

Enter the cowboy. Let me just use one word here to describe this relationship that resulted in a bad marriage but produced an absolutely wonderful son: indifference.

Enter the mechanic. Two-timing, low-down, scum of the pond, lying, cheating jerk...but I'm not angry.

Enter co-worker: If a person is emotionally unstable with a personality disorder and quite possibly bipolar, I don't think it's nice to say bad things about them.

Enter the photographer: He wanted to be faithful. No, really he did.

Let me stop right here to recap. Indifference, neglect, and physical abuse are easy to see in any relationship, whether it be parents, siblings, friends, or mates. Emotional abuse is harder to define but its damage is real, long-lasting, and painful.  Emotional abuse comes under a shroud of deception, so the innocents are not aware of the damage being done to them. They feel the pain, but they can't interpret it or understand it. All they know is that love hurts.

The common thread that wove through all six relationships--including my father--was one of or a mixture of the following: indifference, neglect, and abuse.

Note to my grandchildren: If love hurts, it's not love. Love is adoration, respect, support, caring, kindness, unconditional, and wanting what is best for you in life. Which, by the way, brings me back to the beginning of this post: I discovered what true love feels like. 

Enter Tom



*Two exceptions: My step-father, aka "Dad," and my uncle Jimmy.