Loving Her Doesn’t Mean She Never Loved Him

For those of us who have had a Big Change of Heart, an a-HAH (Her After Him) moment if you will, we are often faced with the question — did you ever love him, or were you always just waiting for her?

And, of course, the answer is both incredibly straightforward and also completely unsatisfying — yes and no.

Yes, of course we loved him. We loved him in so many of the ways we can love a person we are committed to for years, building a life together, sharing important experiences, and being intimate with.

But that love, much like everything else in our world, changes.

And sometimes, the way we change as individuals means that we don’t quite fit into our love anymore, that it doesn’t quite fill us up in the same way it used to.

Maybe our interests change, our passions, our drive. Maybe we lose attraction, desire, yearning. Maybe we are no longer stimulated — mentally, emotionally, physically. Maybe we want more, and we can’t find it with him anymore.

But sometimes, before we’ve gotten the courage to admit that, accept that, and leave…she walks into our lives.

She shows up in a way we never expected, even if she’s been there all along.

And the way our heart responds is nothing like we’ve ever felt before.

And when we fall for her, it feels like everything we had been looking for our whole lives.

So, of course, we were always waiting for her.

In the way that you can wait for something you never knew existed in the first place.

In the way the line from Fools Rush In rings so true in our hearts, “you’re everything I never knew I always wanted.”

Yes, just like that, that’s what we needed.

So no, we never loved him like this. And no, we weren’t always waiting for her, because we didn’t realize she was coming.

But both parts, the loving him and the loving her, are who we are. Neither part is false or fake, or hiding in secrecy.

At some point, in some way, both loves felt incredibly true, honest, and real.

But now, having both, their differences are immense and undeniable.

And maybe we even question for ourselves if what we felt for him was love, knowing how we feel for her now.

It was, it was the love we needed and wanted then, and it filled us up for a long time. It was good; it was our joy, for a long while.

Today, we have found a different, truer happiness for our current selves. And yes, it’s because of her.

Today we look so different than we did years ago, but we would have anyway, had she never shown up at all.

Today we can still tell you that we loved him, earnestly, and yet we love her in a way that fills up every piece of who we are right now.

But don’t ask us what the future holds just yet, we are too full right now to consider anything but her love.