This piece was originally published on the Plus One substack in December. I’m re-releasing it here, now with a different ending…
I love my ex boyfriend deeply. We have the shared intimacy that comes from going through (his) cancer together and (my) much needed growing the fuck up. I often can’t imagine doing life with anyone else. We see the world through the same lens, which feels particularly comforting to me right now, given the state of crazy we’re living through. We value the same things. He makes me feel listened to. And heard. He’s deeply present with me. He’s so handsome it makes me ache. And at 39 years old, having never been married and wanting partnership, I left the relationship.
It wasn’t the love affair I’ve idolized since I was a child. It wasn’t the insatiable desire I’ve dreamed of.
The relationship felt like an Olympic level cross training in staying heart-open in the face of his avoidance. I was convinced that the combination of him facing his own mortality as he went through chemotherapy and the abundance of love that I poured into the partnership would be enough to crack his heart wide open and make it all work. I found myself in a constant state of tension between feeling deeply connected to him and torn up by what I perceived as a lack of the demonstrative displays of love that I felt entitled to. And as I watch the window in which I could have my own biological children closing, I wonder, where is the line between a great relationship just happening to you? And the grass being greener where you water it? Is this what people mean when they say relationships are hard? Was this a normal amount of hard? Or was this time-to-leave hard?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the risk I’m taking in giving up good to hold out for great. The Russian roulette of going for it all, only to potentially be left with “nothing”. On the spectrum of desire for children, I’ve always leaned strongly towards no. Now faced with the idea that the option to have my own might pass me by, a panic has crept in that it’s an experience I’ll regret not having. Growing up, I assumed the love of my life arriving was a birthright. There was no question in my mind that I would be able to make the decision about children from a place of loving partnership. It never occurred to me that I might have to consider having a child in a relationship that wasn’t everything I hoped it would be or forgo having children all together.
Now, I’m sure, dear reader, you might be wondering, am I the problem? I too wonder about that. I’ve queried my friends with that exact question and gotten back a muddled range of responses like “Of course you can have everything you want in this lifetime. The love you’re yearning for is out there.” (But is it? And more specifically, where? And why hasn’t it arrived?) To “Yes, you’re the problem. Get the fuck on it with it.” (I actually wouldn’t know how to go against my intuition and do that).
So then I broaden the aperture to look at the dating and relationship landscape I find myself in. Maybe there’s something to be gleaned from the collective. One of the aforementioned friends, confronted with how problematic I am, responded with “You’re not the exception; no one ends up alone and neither will you.” Which seems like a somewhat convincing argument.
But the data shows a different picture -
46% of American adults are single1
US fertility rates are at an all-time low2
and loneliness has reached epidemic levels3.
Dating apps, once seen as a romantic revolution, have lost $40 billion in value since 20214
and 75% of Gen-Z poll respondents believe AI companionship could completely replace real-life relationships.5
The Atlantic recently heralded “The Slow Quiet Demise of American Romance” and they noted that: “There isn’t a fundamental shift in desire for partnership among young people—only in outcome. Finding a partner is ‘too difficult. It’s too hard.’”
Said again: no shift in desire. Only in outcome.
It’s one of the more heartbreaking descriptions of the current paradigm that I’ve ever read.
Relationally, things seem…. Dark? Which is weird because we’ve never had more access to an abundance of other people through dating apps and social media. Women (in the Western world) have never been more financially free and able to choose their partner for romantic love.
And yet:
Roughly 40% of never-married singles under 40 say they have never been in a romantic relationship6
Singles are close to outnumbering married people in more than 100 major U.S. cities, shifting the social baseline for adulthood.7
Are we watching a generation of people put their chips all in on a fairy tale that’s not coming?
Will I hold out so long for the vision I have in my mind of a relationship, only to look back in old age and realize I had no long term relationship at all? And then I think, I’d rather live my life open to possibility and filled with adventure, than committed to a choice I made out of fear, rooted in scarcity.
Maybe I’ll lose this gamble. But losing myself would be the far greater tragedy.
At least that’s what I tell myself…
And here’s where I amend the ending: I’m far more interested now in the myriad of ways that love can show up in our lives, beyond the fairy tale love narrative. I have been more lifted up and supported in my friendships throughout my life in ways that are so tender and so deeply fulfilling that they deserve, and will get, their own Substack devoted to the topic. I have loved and been loved by men who have given me a full spectrum education on generosity and intimacy, tenderness and partnership, on being a mirror to where I need to grow and evolve. I have witnessed beautiful examples of people choosing to co-parent from the start, outside of a romantic relationship, that are more intentional and loving than some marriages. And so I amend this to say - there is no losing this gamble because it’s not an either/or: finding a soul partnership or not having love in my life.
It’s a more/more/more and extra - how can I have as many textures and types of love in my life as possible? What does it look like to build a life filled with an abundance of all different types of love?
Footnotes
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/unmarried-single-americans-week.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/05/02/loneliness-health-crisis-surgeon-general/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/business/dating-apps-tinder-bumble.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/04/29/80-of-gen-zers-would-marry-an-ai-study/
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/unmarried-women-men.html
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I read this, and honestly, I think sometimes we make love more complicated than it needs to be. You can search your whole life for the perfect relationship, the perfect romance, the perfect partner, and wake up one day realizing that perfection was never the promise. You said he listened to you, you shared the same values, you saw the world through the same lens, and you stood together through one of the hardest experiences a person can face: cancer. That kind of history, intimacy, and connection does not grow on trees.
I have been married for 46 years, and during those years my wife and I were actually divorced and remarried a year later because we found our love again. So I understand something about walking away and later realizing that what you had may have been worth fighting for. Love is not always fireworks and butterflies every day. Sometimes, love is the person who is still standing beside you after life has beaten both of you up a little.
I am not saying you should have stayed, because only you truly know what was missing from your heart. But I do wonder if we sometimes throw away something good while waiting for something perfect that may only exist in our imagination. Relationships are hard, but the real question is whether they are hard because two people are wrong for each other, or hard because two imperfect people are trying to learn how to love each other.
Your ending, though, is something I really agree with. Love is bigger than romance. Love can be found in friendship, family, marriage, forgiveness, second chances, and in the people who show up when life gets difficult. But I also believe we should be careful not to convince ourselves that losing someone we deeply loved was automatically the right choice simply because we are afraid to admit we might miss what we had.
Sometimes the grass is greener where you water it. And sometimes, after you leave the garden, you realize you were already standing in one.
Maybe the greatest gamble is not loving someone imperfectly. Maybe it is spending your whole life searching for perfection and never realizing that real love was never supposed to be perfect in the first place.
I’ve read both. You were right to leave, too good in staying through the illness. It astounds me when people are unable to see the gift that is right in front of them and hang on to it for dear life.
I hope the love you deserve finds you ❤️
Ps: I was a family law attorney for many years so I’m harsher than some!