The Book of Love is Long and Boring

I had a strange revelation recently: What happens when the search is over?
Yeah, I'm about to write about relationships.

I feel like it's pretty normal for soul mate searching to be a part of everyone's life.
Love. It's that thing that's all around. Music, movies, books. It's everywhere.
Some people say they don't want it, and get it anyway. Some say they aren't looking, but it still finds them. Some take it in one night stands. Some take love serially; occasionally; one at a time; two at a time.

 And then there's people like me. I'm one of those people who searches for it. Avidly.

I used to believe in fairy tales and princes and being treated like a princess. I believed in being swept away and relationships being perfect. I believed in that deep, blinding, fire wielding, crazy, unstoppable love. And then I read the Love Languages book. It took all my passionate theories about love right out from underneath me. I remember reading the preface of that book and throwing it across the room because I refused to believe what it was saying: Lasting love is not a raging fire. It's not sparkles and googly eyes and rainbows all the time. It wasn't Cinderella where everyone lived happily ever after. In fact, that passion fades and turns into something deeper, more real...blah blah blah. At the time that sounded incredibly boring to me (which with age and experience I have a totally different understanding and respect for). But at the time, it was stupid. I refused to believe that the excitement you felt in the beginning of a relationship faded. If love was real, that never faded, so people must not really be in love. I was determined to find the love I had whirled up in my head.

and then, unsurprisingly, i did. (or i thought i did)
I fell crazy, head over heels, unbelievably in love with my best friend (that I had only known for less than a year). For my first relationship it was fantastic. I couldn't get enough of the guy. He was my other half; he was the peanutbutter to my applebutter. If I had ever dreamed up a 'perfect' guy in my head at the age of 21, he was it. We clicked and it was awesome. He helped me be a better me; he was encouraging, realistic and patient.  I loved that love. And I loved that guy. I had never felt anything like it before.
But things didn't go how I had planned them out in my head, because obviously that's not how love works. The relationship ended and my world crashed and burned and everything turned to ash. The next year was such a dark time for me.

For a long time I didn't want anything else. Stubbornness set in again and I refused to believe that that was really the end. It was real, true love and he would find his way back to me. As time went on and he dated other people I realized that he wasn't coming back. I became angry that the one person I had loved stronger than anyone else (besides my family) was swept out from under my feet and dragged out into the sea of life without me. That's what I believed: that he was taken from me. And over the next few years that belief turned into anger which, filtered through other relationships, turned to bitterness.

For a couple of years I lived on the whisper of that love. I didn't want anything that wasn't that. I went on living life believing that all love would be like that and if it wasn't then I didn't want it.

Then I got into another relationship and it, too, was a firey one. This one was a different fire. It was destructive and wild. Like fireworks exploding before they actually take off from the ground. It was an angry, passionate, crazy love...but the wrong kind of crazy. It was the years in this relationship that I started to hate love. I started to believe that love wasn't real. There was no such thing as true love and anyone who said or did otherwise was faking it. Love never lasted and marriages fell apart. Nobody actually liked being married or having a family. Everyone was miserable. Everyone cheated. Everyone lied. Everyone fell out of love. That fluffy stuff that happened in the beginning was like cotton candy...it dissolved and it dissolved fast.

My third, most recent and also last, relationship really solidified my pessimistic theories. He fulfilled my self fulfilling prophetic belief that love doesn't really exist because I let him. I chased him even after he broke things off with me. And he let me. And I let him let me. I didn't stop myself. I learned to really hate love because I refused to stop chasing an illusion. Good job, Lindsay.

Occasionally I've seen happy relationships. I've seen people who were lucky in love. But I started fostering the belief that it's pretty rare. After all, I had my first love and nothing has compared since. It started to make sense in my head that it wasn't a common thing. Perhaps that's why I settle for horrible relationships; the fear that real love may only exist once. So for now, I'm still hanging out under that rain cloud.

All of this brings me to where I really wanted to say something: Online dating.

Someone at my work had told me that the percentage of people we meet after college as potential life mates drops dramatically. In fact, it's almost non-existent.

I started to think about this. It was true... I worked in a preschool with all women. Where was I going to meet a man? Well, I met one through family friends, it was that explosive relationship I was in for two years. But we were a scattered rain shower. During the many times that we excommunicated each other I turned to online dating. Unfortunately, once I opened that portal in my life finding love became my vendetta. And let me tell you, its like the Facebook of love. It's just as entertaining and, dare I say, addictive and likewise as frustrating.

It made a monster out of me. A love-search monster. I feel like since I fell in love the first time 5 years ago with that oh-so-perfect-for-me boy that I have been on a relentless search to find it again.

Now...in regards to that inquisition?...
What happens when it ends?
...If it ends.

5 years really isn't so long, but I never had relationships in high school. I just kind of watched everyone else. Right now I feel like I'm watching everyone else get married and fall in love, just like I always have.

But really this is a funny place to be in: to bounce from one dating relationship to another. To sometimes be getting to know 2 or 3 or even 4 people at the same time all with the vague intent of making our way to a relationship. I've been on dates with 3 different people in one week. I've started and ended so many conversations in one day that I feel like my life sometimes is just a series of speed dates.

But what will I be like if I ever meet that ONE person who fits the bill? The one who brings a sense of real love back into my life? What will life to be like to only keep track of one person's life story; one phone number; to date only one person and not confuse them with someone else? And what if I get married? What will it be like to know I have one person to share the rest of my life with; to know that I've found what I've been looking for.

What will life be like when I don't have to search for love anymore?