Love In Love

There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.  The former is an affection and a feeling that can be held for anyone or anything.  The latter is almost exclusively reserved for romantic love, that is to say someone who makes you feel those butterflies in your stomach, that heartbeat that misses a beat, that moment where time stops when your phone has a text and you see it's from them and you open it to read whatever they said next because it's from them and you can't wait to see what it is, even if it turns out to be nothing important, the fact they thought of you makes you feel a warmth and a rush that envelops your soul.

I truly believe that once you fall in love with someone, you will forever love them, no matter what happens.  You can fall out of love with someone but you can't stop loving them if it was really love.  There's a line to be drawn between like, love, and lust, something which you will only learn the difference between through experience and through your own realisation.  Nobody can tell you what love is, what lust is, and what it means just to like someone.  You come to realise it for yourself in time.

When you fall out of love, you find yourself looking at the person you were in love with in a new light.  Sometimes it's considered to be a sobering experience, with the antecedent being a "love drunk" state of mind.  If the feelings were real and the emotion was true then I believe you will forever love that person even when you are no longer in love with them.

There are guys who I fell in love with when I was younger.  I still love every single one of them.  I could never be with any of them now though, too much happened and too much emotion was attached.  I still feel affection and warmth for each of them but that's all it is now.  I know my feelings were real and I know my emotions were true because even when I see their faces now I still smile and I remember what I felt before.  There is no longer that drive or that control over your mind that once existed however.  No longer does your heart overwhelm your head and push you to do anything to have them.  There is a recognition that is found where your heart remembers but in a way where it recognises time has passed.

When I first went to University, that was for me as a young gay man the first time I really got to be open about my sexuality and with that openness there was an honesty about what I wanted - a serious, committed, long term relationship.  Trouble was I was old before my time, having skipped over my adolescence due to trauma I never experienced the years of recklessness that most people do in that time.  Nobody my age wanted a relationship and in time I reluctantly accepted that if I chose to wait forever then I probably would wait forever.  I gave in and I explored and sampled everything.  I was late to the party by that point.  As others were finding a new level below, I was rising higher.  Everyone else wanted a relationship whenever I did not.  That led to a lot of turmoil, broken hearts, and broken dreams, my own included.

When I look back on that time, I don't regret any of it.  I've said before that in life you do what you think is right in the moment, and when you look back in hindsight you see things you never saw in that moment, it's unfair to judge your past self with the knowledge you now hold because they didn't know any of that back then and usually the fact they didn't is what led you to learn those things in the first place.

I learned a lot from every man I loved.  Each love taught me something about myself and about other people.  I am grateful for the experiences I had, and I hold a happiness and an affection in my heart for that time we had together, even those that didn't end well.  I still love every one of them but I could never be with any of them now.  I love them all but I am not in love with any of them.  I don't think you can truly understand that distinction until you have been through the experience.