The Habitual Monogamist — Chapter One
How childhood taught me to keep searching for a love that wasn’t mine.
I realize now that falling in love over and over again is actually because I had a piece-of-shit mom and was raised by a stepdad that, while he swore he was my daddy, was actually only martyring himself to keep me safe from a woman who was, well, someone I needed to be kept safe from.
While I appreciate that, I realize now that was not real love. It was martyrdom for him and a lie for me.
I look back at the two of them now, and I realize that everything since has been me searching for the type of love I should have gotten from them. And when I look around at people who have healthy romantic love, it is built on the truth that they know the foundation of love that parents offer. Or they’re deeply tangled in a snare: one being a knight-in-shining-armor type, and the other content being desperately dependent on the first.
Perhaps at some point in time we will get into the intricacies of how this childhood trauma affects our inner child, or the psychology of how broken parents create broken belief systems. But for now, let’s just talk about love.
I dated a few really good people. People that, looking back, would’ve been the healthiest relationships. People that I should’ve held on to. Each time, I either ran to someone broken, or, in the early ones, I let a friend convince me to break up.
I realize now, of course, that she was not a friend. And based on the adult life that she lives, in addiction and everything else, I realize, of course, that she was as toxic as anyone else. So the good guys, the ones with their head on their shoulders, they got pushed aside.
So there were several before I met the soulmate, but he was different. He filled a hole in my very sense of self. I had met him earlier, sort of in passing. We knew who each other were, but the moment that we really met, I was fifteen. The deep soul connection between us was undeniable.
We could feel each other from opposite sides of the school, and eventually learned we could feel each other from opposite sides of the city. It was deeply fulfilling. Every Friday morning he brought me a rose. I collected them on the dashboard of my car.
I felt very special walking around with that symbol of someone deeply loving me. Now, of course, I realize that there are people who walk through life with that sense of someone deeply loving them because they know they are deeply, deeply loved by a parent. I never knew that.
He had his own trauma, his own interesting parental dynamics at home, and had even been sent to rehab earlier because, through his parents’ neglect, he had found his way into the liquor cabinet.
There were times I knew he needed me, and I would ask the teacher to leave the class and go to the bathroom. And I would just walk straight to where he was, around the corner somewhere.
Now, keep in mind, this was when teachers weren’t paying attention and there weren’t cameras or cellphones or anything else going on. In general, no one cared and no one noticed. I realize now there was this magical knowing in the teachers’ minds, as if someone with the power to control them whispered in their ears, “Let her go. Let her find him.” And so, I would find him, not because I knew where he was, but because I was drawn straight to him.
Later, he transferred to a magnet school downtown, far from my school. I didn’t even know where it was. But there was a day I walked out the school door, hopped in my car, drove straight to that school, and walked into that classroom.
Everyone in the class looked as if they were expecting me, and he said, “I knew you would come.” His teacher filled with light, knowing he had witnessed something miraculous. We left just in the nick of time, just moments before we both would have broken beneath the weight of the distance between us.
In a time before cellphones, before these magic portals that we carry in our hands, before he could have told me where he was or that he needed me. This happened.
I found him.