love
Love After Fifty

 

Love – What an amazing thing to feel. To be in love is something most of us either are, or desire to be. Today’s blog piece is a piece written by a friend of PoetsIN, Frank Tipa. The effects of a toxic relationship can leave the strongest of us with a broken heart and with mental illness. Frank explores finding love again after separation, in this open, honest, and relatable memoir. Hold on to hope. It still exists, even when your world is so dark you can’t see it.

Now, over to Frank.

love

If you’re anything like me, you once thought that you and the “love of your life” would be together for eternity.  Then, slowly and methodically, you find yourself alone.  It’s not uncommon for long-term marriages to end up on the fritz and imploding.  When you’re in the middle of a lifetime of love, however, you just don’t imagine it happening to you.  All too often, though, it does.

There is a part of separating from a toxic relationship that is very liberating.  Especially if you happen to be the person who has tried to make it work, only to find yourself feeling the fool.  You stand up for yourself.  You move ahead.  And, despite your fears (yes, ladies, men have fears, too) you break away and try to maintain a level of self-respect.

Having lost the love of a lifetime, but being someone who is a loving individual, is somewhat of a challenging situation to be in.  While there is a part of you that believes it’s important to stand on your own, you know in your heart that you are the type of person who truly wants to share life’s experiences with someone you hold dear.

Often people find someone compatible enough to be a companion.  There may be affection, sex, and often a commitment.  However, most recognize that this is not love.  Then there are those who stumble across an individual who has something to offer that they were deprived of in their past relationship.  This becomes a focal point around which they pretend to believe they have found their true love.  Usually, this type of relationship becomes unmanageable and an unhappy place for both individuals.

So, the question begs.  Can someone who is middle aged find someone who completes them?  Someone who fills the void left by their first true love, as well as the void created by one or more relationships that fall short of what we really want in a partner?  The answer is a resounding “YES!”

You.  The one who hasn’t found the right person to complete you yet.  Keep searching.  Stay true to yourself.  Don’t’ let the failed attempts discourage you.  For love is the one thing that makes us whole.  Love gives us purpose.  Love makes us see the beauty in life.  Love is waiting for you in the arms of someone you haven’t met yet.

My hope is that you’ll persevere.  That you’ll fancy someone and ask them out.  That you’ll share some secrets and let your guard down.  That you’ll act impulsively and intuitively.  That you will love without the expectation of having love returned.  That you’ll find a way to be yourself and eventually find someone who wants you just that way.

My hope is that now, at this age of typical “crisis”, you’ll find someone who completes you.  Someone who takes you, and everything you’ve carried with you to this point, without reproach and holds on to you like you are the best thing ever.

Until then, hold on to hope.  Because love is worth it, and so are you!

 

F. Tipa

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