Real love: A Reckoning

There’s a particular kind of hunger that shows up when someone finally sees you. Not the surface version—the curated, polished, acceptable version you show the world. The actual you. The one with all the walls down. The one who thinks dangerous thoughts and feels dangerous feelings and isn’t afraid to say it out loud.

That’s the hunger that got me.

THE FIVE REASONS I SAID YES

I didn’t just wake up one day obsessed with a man who was, objectively, a mess. Five specific things made me willing to take a chance. Five reasons that seemed, in the moment, like enough.

He was funny. Not the performative kind of funny where someone’s trying too hard to impress you. Real humor. The kind that comes from intelligence and observation and a slightly twisted worldview. He could make me laugh until my sides hurt, and laughter was a language I’d been speaking alone for a long time.

We had incredible conversations. This man could discuss theory, history, politics, philosophy—the things that actually matter. He’d lived in multiple countries. He had a perspective shaped by displacement and observation and a genuinely fascinating mind. When we talked, I felt like I was finally in a room with someone operating at the frequency I actually think at.

He saw me. This is the dangerous one. He looked at me—really looked—and he recognized something. He knew more about me than anyone else. I let the walls all the way down with him. I showed him the interior landscape most people never get access to. And in that seeing, I felt known. Truly known, possibly for the first time in my adult life.

He wanted me sexually. After years of a particular kind of numbness, of going through the motions, of not actually wanting anyone—this was a reclamation. I wanted him. I initiated. I was hungry. There was electricity. That matters more than I can articulate. I was embarking on my sexual renaissance. I hadn’t seen it since University.

He represented growth. He had survived things. He had a story that most people in my sheltered Calgary bubble would never encounter. Being near him felt like being near something real, something tested, something that had been through the fire and kept going.

Those five reasons seemed like enough.

They weren’t.

THE SLOW DISAPPEARANCE

Here’s what happens when you become emotionally dependent on someone’s presence: you stop breathing when they’re not there. It’s worse when he has never loved someone before.

Two cataclysmic events are happening at the same time: him falling madly in love and terrified, and me falling in love and going all in. Two opposed forces. We started strong, 4 nights in a row. Drives to the mountains, binge watching White Lotus, dinners out, breakfasts in. Long nights in bed. The red flags were there. I chose to ignore them. He needed a pillow fort around him to sleep. No ‘falling asleep on his chest’. He was abandoned as a small boy and had never, to this point in his life, faced those deeply traumatizing and life-altering circumstances that happened at such a young age.

Our 4-day weekends turned into 2-day weekends. He was destabilizing at a rapid pace. The first time he told me he loved me, I could see the fear in his eyes. He was petrified. This was a terrifying feeling. His nervous system was shutting down.

His whole life has been sleeping with women until he got bored, never emotionally connecting. He was living a pre-scripted life. Get his PhD, keep the majority of the humans he came across at arm’s length, play tennis, travel a bit, and repeat. No one was invited into his inner sanctuary. No one. It was lonely for him, but he made it work.

I came along and ripped that life script to shreds. He had many nights telling me how in love he was with me. That he had never felt this way in his life. That he is paralyzed. Scared to lose me but even more scared to love me. He was utterly clueless on how to navigate true intimacy. It broke my heart. I loved him as much as he loved me. I was all in, and he was all out.

It started small. I’d wait for his texts. Then I’d wait for his responses to my texts. Then the overnights started becoming less frequent. Fewer and fewer. And with each reduction, I felt the oxygen getting thinner. I wasn’t living my life—I was waiting to live it when he was available. I was scheduling my existence around his bandwidth.

This is the version of myself I preach against. The one who settles for crumbs. The one who diminishes her own needs to make space for someone else’s limitations. And yet there I was, doing exactly that, completely aware of the irony even as it was happening.

I have dozens of journal entries from this period. Entire volumes documenting my attempt to navigate the cognitive dissonance between who I know myself to be and who I was becoming in relation to him. Those entries are a script of my thought process—what was real, what was projection, what was me trying to convince myself that less was enough.

THE CATALOG OF INCOMPATIBILITY

At some point, I stopped being generous in my interpretation. I started seeing clearly.

He wasn’t someone I was normally attracted to, if I’m being honest. He was a germaphobe. His quirks were not quirks; they were survival techniques. He was simple, low-maintenance, but very structured and rigid in his routine. He liked certain ways of doing things, and ruffling of those feathers shook him off his foundation. I made concessions for his needs in order for him to feel safe. But I could have lived with all of that if the other pieces fit.

The other pieces didn’t fit.

Sexually, the things I actually wanted made him uncomfortable. His rigidity was frustrating. I know it was his trauma and OCD. With this particular shape of his damage, he had boundaries around intimacy that felt less like healthy protection and more like a wall. When he said “I don’t cuddle with my girlfriends”—implying that cuddling represented some sacred level of intimacy—it became clear to me that he was protecting himself from connection, not honouring it.

He had never been in a real relationship. Not because he was unlucky, but because he didn’t have the psychological capacity for one. He wanted to sleep with women until he got bored. Hide his OCD. Play tennis. Live to just exist. That was the life plan. There was no architecture for an actual partnership.

His view of himself was fundamentally broken. When he said, “I thought you’d just forget me,” he was revealing that he saw no inherent worth in himself. He was waiting for abandonment because that’s what he believed he deserved. And you cannot love someone out of that hole. You cannot convince them enough that they’re worth staying for.

The conversations were incredible, yes. But incredible conversations don’t fill the love tank. They don’t show up emotionally. They don’t meet you in all the areas where partnership actually lives.

WHAT HE GAVE ME (AND WHAT IT COST)

I need to be honest about this, because it matters: he gave me something real.

He helped me see that I’m intelligent. Not in the abstract way I’d always believed it, but in a lived, demonstrated way. I could analyze the theory. I could understand big concepts. I could articulate my thoughts in a way that wasn’t just spitting in the wind. I wasn’t blindly wrong about the world—I was actually understanding it. He was a witness to that, and that witnessing mattered.

He was the first guy in decades that I actually wanted to sleep with. I wanted to kiss him and hug him every moment that I could. It was a rush. It had been a very long time since I felt that way. I was a teenager having my first crush. The feelings were not out of obligation, not out of loneliness, not out of “this is what’s expected.” Pure, uncomplicated desire. That reclamation was real. Those naps on his lap—when I felt loved and cherished and taken care of—those were some of the best moments of my life. The safety of being held. The permission to rest. The feeling of being someone’s priority, even if only for an afternoon.

But here’s the thing: I can get all of that from someone else. Someone who doesn’t have his particular constellation of damage. Someone who actually wants to do the work. Someone who has the capacity to meet me in all areas—intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. Someone who brings the humour all the time, not just when it’s convenient.

The cost of what he gave me was seven months of my life on hold. Books full of journal entries, trying to convince myself that less was enough. A slow suffocation. A destabilization that I’m still working to recover from. Holding my breath waiting for a change is counterproductive to my survival, with only 26% room for that oxygen.

That’s not a fair trade.

THE MOMENT I KNEW

There’s a specific moment when you move from hope to clarity.

It wasn’t a dramatic betrayal. It was quieter than that. It was the accumulation of small abandonments. The texts that took hours to answer. The overnights became rare. The sense that I was constantly reaching toward someone who was always, fundamentally, pulling away.

And then—the cruellest part—when I finally drew a boundary and said “I need you to choose this, to choose us, or I’m done,” he couldn’t do it. Not because he didn’t want to. But because he doesn’t have the psychological equipment to do the work that a real partnership requires.

So I chose for both of us.

I didn’t do it dramatically. I didn’t send a long letter or have a final conversation. I put it all into writing—for myself, in my journals—and then I moved on. I said let’s put our relationship on pause for 30 days. No contact. Now, when I think about that, I think, ‘what was I thinking?’. Why would I cave to who I am for someone who has no emotional capacity to meet me?

I was living in a fantasy land paved with hope and potential. At the 30-day mark, I reached out. He was cold. He was rattled. He was well beyond his walls. He told me he could only manage friendship. I foolishly thought that we could try that. The hopeful cynic in me thought that maybe in small doses, he could see the beauty in what we were. The same patterns returned, and he retreated. I was getting tiny bits of movement. The final straw came when he didn’t have the capacity to respond to a simple question for over 8 hours. At that point, I knew what I needed to do. When he finally reached out, expecting engagement, expecting me to be there waiting, I gave him what he’d been giving me for months: silence.

Ghosting gets a bad rap, but sometimes it’s the most honest thing you can do. Sometimes silence is the most accurate reflection of what someone has been doing all along.

THE INVENTORY

When I get serious about the dating apps again, I am ready: I’m a hot commodity. Not in a shallow way, but in the way that matters. I’m intelligent, I’m interesting, I’m attractive, I have my own life and my own vision. I’m someone worth choosing. I’m someone worth doing the work for. Right now, I am going to date myself. To reclaim my soul and grow. Continuing to be the best version I can be.

And that’s not arrogance. That’s clarity.

My journal entries are not evidence of my obsession. They’re evidence of my intelligence. I was using the tools I have—writing, analysis, self-reflection—to work through something complicated. I was documenting my thought process. I was distinguishing between what was real and what was a projection. I was highlighting my own amazing qualities in the process of understanding why I was willing to settle.

That’s not a weakness. That’s the methodology of someone who refuses to be a victim of her own choices.

THE FIVE THINGS I’M LEAVING BEHIND

1. The fantasy of saving him. I cannot make him see his own worth. I cannot love him out of his damage. That’s his work, and he has to want to do it.
2. The crumbs he was offering. I don’t negotiate on my baseline needs anymore. I need someone who shows up, who does the work, who meets me in all the ways that matter.
3. The waiting. I will not spend my life checking my phone. I will not shrink myself to fit someone else’s limited capacity.
4. The hope that he’d change. People change when they decide to. He hasn’t decided. He won’t decide. And I can’t live in a perpetual state of waiting for that decision.
5. The belief that incredible conversations are enough. They’re not. They’re a foundation, but not a house.

THE PATH FORWARD

I’m more stable now that I’ve put this to paper. Naming it. Analyzing it. Understanding the architecture of my own choices.

I’m also clear on what I actually want: someone who can meet me in all areas. Intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. Someone with humour—all the time, not just when it’s convenient. Someone who doesn’t need me to save him, but who wants to build something with me.

Although I wish he had stepped up, I am grateful to him. He showed me that I am actually capable of being loved. I can safely lower the walls and take the armour off, even if it’s for a short time; that feeling is new. I like it. I have been a warrior for my entire life, living in fight mode. When I would nap on his lap while he watched a tennis match, I became the person I wanted to be, not fighting, not mitigating risks, not scanning for threats. I was home. My soul was at peace.

I know what I want now, and I have to believe it is still out there for me.

I’ve seen it. I tasted it. I felt it. It’s real.

He could have decided to try. He didn’t. I have to respect that. More importantly, I have to respect myself enough to move on.

So I’m getting the fuck outside. I’m dancing. I’m singing. I’m growing into my best self.

And I’m not waiting for anyone to catch up.

Stay Fierce | The World Will Adjust