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.
THIS: "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." I think for all that our culture overshares, one of the few things we don't see and can't always know is whether what we're experiencing is "normal hard" or "I need to leave hard". And is this the kind of hard everyone else experiences? Thank you for reading and for sharing some of your story. I loved reading it. It sounds like you and your wife have quite the love story ♥️
So true and that’s where having experienced more than one love-relationship can help. Really help. Have you read any of Jennie Young’s rhetoric work on finding needles? I think you’d love it. Ps. If you want a child, I think you’re right to either hold out for a healthy attacher who isn’t anti-relationship, or have a baby on your own. SMBC. I have three kids with an avoidant and let me tell you, it doesn’t get less lonely. It amplifies. The pressure on him.. fwiw, if you have a child, I think you made a good choice. You could have a baby on your own and love him as a good friend on the side. Untraditional but hey, fulfillment in life comes in many forms. :)
It’s such a great point about the avoidance amplifying with the increased pressure. And I totally agree with you that being more open to untraditional paths can lead to greater fulfillment. It’s funny - Jenny Young’s work doesn’t super resonant with me; it lands for me as being close minded to possibility and to people you might not think of as your match? But maybe I need to revisit her content. Thanks so much for reading and sharing!
Thanks for this. I think an over reliance on grandiose expressions of "love and romance" are harming my generation. Also it seems to me she went with a guy who has admitted to having a broken relationship system based on his childhood. So I fail to understand why this article has the vibe of "maybe we're just not not going to find love." It's there, just find someone who's emotionally healthy, and have realistic expectations (which requires rewiring hypermodern ideals on love and romance. The best relationships are boring, and this is true.
Excellent response, IMO, because I’ve know that attempts to create perfection always leads to disappointments , since perfection does not exist and the buildup of disappointments is a poison that kills relationships.
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!
I love and relate to this so much. My posts are on breaking up with someone you care about, which in my experience never feels good but always ultimately feels right. So many sources of love and inspiration in this life, as you note. Lovely piece. Thanks for sharing.
It’s terrifying to read the “there’s no shift in desire, only in outcome”, because in a lot of ways it’s become an issue of choice. More apps, more opportunities for connection, more options - but less choosing, more loneliness, more analysis paralysis, more overthinking. I hope you find everything you’re hoping for! following your intuition is the only way in an age of so much noise meant to try to silence it
You will have many great loves. Where one ends, another one has the opportunity to begin—even if you don’t know where and when that next great love will show up. At least that’s what I have to keep telling myself as my marriage unravels. 🫶🏻
Love this piece and love this conversation. Especially the part about finding all different textures of love and fulfillment. I left a relationship at 43 (gasp!). And I left because I want all the things. Life has deepened and broadened in such unexpected ways. Honoring the depths of non romantic love is such a power move 🤍✨
YES TO WANTING ALL THE THINGS. Thank you so much for reading and for this lovely comment. And I'm right there with you - I've found that when I surrender to what's actually happening instead of what I want to happen - there can be such a deepening of love and aliveness. (In stark contract to my twenties when I wanted anyone I dated to be my boyfriend. And there were only were only 2 options - boyfriend or devastation 🫠🫠)
“Women (in the Western world) have never been more financially free and able to choose their partner for romantic love.” - Uhh this is so cringe and Eurocentric.
China has developed an enormous ecosystem of female entrepreneurship and wealth creation. Hurun’s 2026 list counted 78 self-made female billionaires in China - 52% of the world’s total of 150. Obviously billionaire status isn’t a proxy for gender equality, but it does challenge the idea that women’s economic independence is fundamentally a Western phenomenon.
And Asia has developed very different approaches to supporting women as workers and mothers. Vietnam provides around 26 weeks of paid maternity leave; Singapore 16 weeks; China, Japan and Malaysia around 14 weeks. Japan and South Korea go much further with paid parental-leave systems that can extend for a year or more, something unheard of outside of Scandinavia.
So I think a more accurate statement would be that women in many Western countries have reached historically high levels of legal and financial autonomy - not that this is uniquely Western.
Also outside of a few countries, all non-western have had the notion of romantic love (instead of arranged marriages).
I think many people are faced with this same question- is the grass greener or am I truly happy? could it be better or am I asking for too much?
For me it was trusting my gut and knowing that I was not asking for too much. I was allowed to want more. And trusting myself was the thing that would matter more in the end than whether I had lost something I could not replace. Because losing myself was not an option
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.
THIS: "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." I think for all that our culture overshares, one of the few things we don't see and can't always know is whether what we're experiencing is "normal hard" or "I need to leave hard". And is this the kind of hard everyone else experiences? Thank you for reading and for sharing some of your story. I loved reading it. It sounds like you and your wife have quite the love story ♥️
So true and that’s where having experienced more than one love-relationship can help. Really help. Have you read any of Jennie Young’s rhetoric work on finding needles? I think you’d love it. Ps. If you want a child, I think you’re right to either hold out for a healthy attacher who isn’t anti-relationship, or have a baby on your own. SMBC. I have three kids with an avoidant and let me tell you, it doesn’t get less lonely. It amplifies. The pressure on him.. fwiw, if you have a child, I think you made a good choice. You could have a baby on your own and love him as a good friend on the side. Untraditional but hey, fulfillment in life comes in many forms. :)
It’s such a great point about the avoidance amplifying with the increased pressure. And I totally agree with you that being more open to untraditional paths can lead to greater fulfillment. It’s funny - Jenny Young’s work doesn’t super resonant with me; it lands for me as being close minded to possibility and to people you might not think of as your match? But maybe I need to revisit her content. Thanks so much for reading and sharing!
Thanks for this. I think an over reliance on grandiose expressions of "love and romance" are harming my generation. Also it seems to me she went with a guy who has admitted to having a broken relationship system based on his childhood. So I fail to understand why this article has the vibe of "maybe we're just not not going to find love." It's there, just find someone who's emotionally healthy, and have realistic expectations (which requires rewiring hypermodern ideals on love and romance. The best relationships are boring, and this is true.
Excellent response, IMO, because I’ve know that attempts to create perfection always leads to disappointments , since perfection does not exist and the buildup of disappointments is a poison that kills relationships.
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!
I love a direct woman - thank you for reading and for the comment.
And I sincerely thank you for the hope of love ♥️
All the very best!! ❤️❤️
Yep they say if you never gamble on love then you have never gamble at all
I love and relate to this so much. My posts are on breaking up with someone you care about, which in my experience never feels good but always ultimately feels right. So many sources of love and inspiration in this life, as you note. Lovely piece. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for reading and for the comment ♥️
It’s terrifying to read the “there’s no shift in desire, only in outcome”, because in a lot of ways it’s become an issue of choice. More apps, more opportunities for connection, more options - but less choosing, more loneliness, more analysis paralysis, more overthinking. I hope you find everything you’re hoping for! following your intuition is the only way in an age of so much noise meant to try to silence it
Isn't it chilling?! It lives rent free in my brain.
I couldn't agree more - intuition has always been important but I think now in a time of not knowing what's true/ AI/ etc, it's absolutely imperative.
Thank you for reading and commenting! ♥️
You will have many great loves. Where one ends, another one has the opportunity to begin—even if you don’t know where and when that next great love will show up. At least that’s what I have to keep telling myself as my marriage unravels. 🫶🏻
I deeply believe this to be true. For both of us.
But navigating that closure before something else can begin is gut wrenchingly painful.
I hope you're giving yourself love and comfort ♥️
Love this piece and love this conversation. Especially the part about finding all different textures of love and fulfillment. I left a relationship at 43 (gasp!). And I left because I want all the things. Life has deepened and broadened in such unexpected ways. Honoring the depths of non romantic love is such a power move 🤍✨
YES TO WANTING ALL THE THINGS. Thank you so much for reading and for this lovely comment. And I'm right there with you - I've found that when I surrender to what's actually happening instead of what I want to happen - there can be such a deepening of love and aliveness. (In stark contract to my twenties when I wanted anyone I dated to be my boyfriend. And there were only were only 2 options - boyfriend or devastation 🫠🫠)
Tell me more about school! 🫶
I love this comment ♥️ School was a training to be an ayurvedic counselor, which you can read more about here, if you're interested: https://www.goingallinonlove.com/p/free-ayurveda-appointments
I always love your perspective! 💕
❤️❤️
✨💗👯♀️💗✨
❤️❤️
“Women (in the Western world) have never been more financially free and able to choose their partner for romantic love.” - Uhh this is so cringe and Eurocentric.
China has developed an enormous ecosystem of female entrepreneurship and wealth creation. Hurun’s 2026 list counted 78 self-made female billionaires in China - 52% of the world’s total of 150. Obviously billionaire status isn’t a proxy for gender equality, but it does challenge the idea that women’s economic independence is fundamentally a Western phenomenon.
And Asia has developed very different approaches to supporting women as workers and mothers. Vietnam provides around 26 weeks of paid maternity leave; Singapore 16 weeks; China, Japan and Malaysia around 14 weeks. Japan and South Korea go much further with paid parental-leave systems that can extend for a year or more, something unheard of outside of Scandinavia.
So I think a more accurate statement would be that women in many Western countries have reached historically high levels of legal and financial autonomy - not that this is uniquely Western.
Also outside of a few countries, all non-western have had the notion of romantic love (instead of arranged marriages).
I think many people are faced with this same question- is the grass greener or am I truly happy? could it be better or am I asking for too much?
For me it was trusting my gut and knowing that I was not asking for too much. I was allowed to want more. And trusting myself was the thing that would matter more in the end than whether I had lost something I could not replace. Because losing myself was not an option