How I found true love in middle age
The only way to describe it is a miracle
Late October 2012:
My marriage had ended only months before. I was just starting to pick up the pieces.
All my life, I had waited for rom-com love.
Destiny. Soulmates. It never came - just one relationship drama after another.
Finally, at age 38, I decided to marry someone I loved but was mostly friends with. Because that’s what ‘they’ said would bring me happiness. The ones who write articles about how ‘rom-com’ love isn’t real, marriage is not really like that, and I have to build my own happiness.
I decided maybe ‘they’ were right. I decided what I really wanted was just a kind, stable, good person to be my partner. A ‘best friend’.
But I was wrong.
I have never been as lonely as I was in a marriage with someone I was not madly in love with. Who didn’t look at me like he adored me.
I felt lonely because my inside didn’t match my outside: I looked like a happily married person, but I was not.
It also affected my relationship with God.
I was afraid to listen to what God was saying to me, because I knew what he was saying: ‘they’ were wrong. I was destined for more love than this, and I should believe it was true. For myself, and for the person I had married, knowing he was not ‘the one’.
My divorce as a Christian - and as a priest - is a whole other blog post. Suffice it to say I was just putting my life back together.
I decided I had to live with integrity: I was either going to have true love in my life, or I was going to live alone.
I didn’t believe I would find my rom-com romance, but I had stopped being afraid to admit to myself - and to God - that this is what I really wanted.
That’s where I was in October 2012.
Then I ended up having to go to a work retreat on the weekend of my birthday. And who should walk in the door but that guy I had met months earlier - he was a lay person, but on a board of advice for the bishop, who was my boss.
We had met months earlier, when he had offered me his jacket when I was cold, at a another random meeting we both attended. I had forgotten his name, but not his kindness.
This time I noticed he was cute.
We sat next to each other in worship. We flirted a little and said goodbye. It took two more random meetings before we started meeting on purpose.
Then we fell in love, just like in the movies.
Two years later we got married. Today my heart still skips a beat every time he walks in the door. He still texts ‘I love you’ several times a day, even when we’re in the same place. I still feel adored.
This is a miracle. There is no other word for it. It’s not the only miracle of my life, but it is one of the most central, and one of the most astonishing.
True love found me - and kept me. I did not believe I would find it. I did not believe I deserved it. I certainly did not believe I was good enough, kind enough, beautiful enough - whatever ‘enough’ you are supposed to be to experience this kind of love.
I didn’t really believe, but I was willing to want more than I thought I deserved.
The very biggest miracle is this: I remembered that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine.
Don’t listen to ‘them’. Listen to your heart.
Splendid telling of splendid story. May we all find such coherence in connecting the dots of our love lives, attunement with love's Source..where and however the dots lead.
First 40 years: marriage functions as a successful educational corporation with respect and hard work but without the core of love. However, adoption of identical twin girls and blessings of parenthood. No important regrets; I’d do it all over again to be the Dad to those two miracles. Last 20 years: married, in total love, to my dear wife. Perfection? Nope. God favored us with love together, nurtured us with forgiveness, and gave us plenty to do.