Finding both the work I love and the person I love took me on a journey that taught me to rethink everything I thought I knew about how love works
From the time I was an adolescent, and I first became aware that I was responsible for making a life for myself, I knew that a good life involved love. I had to find work I love, a person I love, a place to live that I love — and so on. A good life meant finding love — in its various incarnations. And so when it came time for me to leave home and build a life of my own, I went looking for love.
Unfortunately, I ended up finding out that I — like so many of us — had gotten love all wrong. I misunderstood the mission — as it were — when it comes to love. I thought that what I was supposed to do was find love, in the way that you find a good deal at an antique shop.
But that’s not how it works. That’s not the mission. A good life isn’t about finding love. It’s about building it.
First Loves
When I left home for college, I did so believing that I loved art. I declared it my major, and told anyone who would listen that I was going to be an artist.
That same year, I told my first serious girlfriend that I loved her. I told my friends I loved her. I told my parents I loved her.
Within one year, my girlfriend and I parted ways — the year having created both physical and emotional distance between us. What I thought was love was simply infatuation with someone new, and with a deeper kind of relationship than I had experienced before.
Within two years, I became frustrated with art. The program I was in was competitive. I fell behind. I became unmotivated and disillusioned. The love I thought I had for art faded.
By the end of my sophomore year of college, I had discovered two new loves: a new girl, and a new major. Unfortunately, as time went on, neither would turn out to be what I had thought.
Making Love, Faking Love
As I entered my twenties, I had changed romantic partners and changed majors. I began dating a girl I would date for more than 5 years. And I found a subject of study that fell deeply in love with: philosophy. Not only did I love it, I did very well at it. I very quickly declared that because I loved it, I would do whatever it took to do it for a living — that is, be a philosophy professor. It became my mission.
As the years pressed on, my romantic relationship became toxic. We were both young. She had years of trauma from various sources she hadn’t worked through, and instead let it all out on me. I was emotionally stunted and terribly inattentive. The love we thought we found was a festering codependence. Whatever relationship we thought we made was detrimental.
That relationship had a detrimental effect on my pursuit of the other love I’d found. When I began graduate school, the relationship was so bad, I began skipping classes regularly. I fell into substances of various types to avoid the emotions I was going through — but didn’t dare actually address. My research and writing suffered. I ended up getting kicked out of the graduate program.
I ended up being very fortunate, and when I had to relocate, that toxic relationship ended. After some time, I tried to forge another relationship — which didn’t work out. I had no program to return to, and thus, no clear career path.
Mistaking Love
After being out of the love game for a while, I found someone, or rather she found me. We had both gone to the same college, and passed each other many times without formal introductions. I didn’t know it, but she had had her eye on me for a while.
She reached out when I became active on social media after my break-up and relocation. We emailed. We talked on the phone. Then we began to meet in person. I fell in love. She fell in love. We moved in together. I proposed. We bought a house. We got married. We made 2 wonderful children.
During all of that, I fought a battle with myself about the profession I loved — but hadn’t yet secured. I began my 30th year on earth with no Ph.D and no professorship on the horizon. I had accepted a job at a small company in the area where we lived — but I always had my eye on that horizon of academia — my true love. Or so I thought.
When I applied to Ph.D programs — 17 of them, to be exact — the response wasn’t great. My academic record was too spotty. My pedigree wasn’t impressive. I could no longer simply uproot and move to chase whatever low-paying academic position opened up. It was becoming clear that this love may end up eluding me.
And while I fought that internal battle to find my way to the profession I loved, I let my other love whither. That battle I was fighting made me distant from my wife — just as she was starting her journey as a mother and a burgeoning entrepreneur. I didn’t heed her requests that I rejoin her. I simply fell deeper into my inner life.
After a time, I ended up realizing that academia wasn’t in the cards for me. I wouldn’t end up as a philosophy professor. I couldn’t in good conscience put my wife and kids through the uncertainty and upheaval to tilt at windmills in a dying, yet cutthroat job market. I closed that chapter, and bid adieu to that particular love story. And all the while, I had all but shut out the other love story of my life.
A Discovery
There I was, with two real loves of my life that seemed out of reach. One had slipped away years ago. The other, I pushed away, while I pined for the one I should have known I couldn’t reach.
But then the woman I had all but pushed away from my heart helped me realize something. I was devastated by the fact that I would never be able to do my dream job — the job I loved. But she asked me an important question: what is it about that job that made me love it? And when I answered that researching, thinking, writing, and teaching others was what made me love that job — she again asked me an important question: could I find a way to do those things I love without having that exact job? The answer — surprisingly — was a resounding yes.
Thanks to my long-suffering wife, I came to realize that I didn’t need that job — that “love” that got away to do what I love. All I had to do was forge a path — my own path — where I could do the things that made me love that job, but within my current situation. Would it be easy? No. Would it be the same as if I had gone into academia under ideal circumstances? Of course not. But whatever it ended up being, I would have to make it happen. I would need to build it.
The Real Mission
It’s taken 20 years and several wrong turns, but I’ve finally realized that when it came to love, my main problem was that I had gotten my verbs all wrong. Life is not about finding love out in the world. It’s not about finding things that you already love and riding them into utopia. That way of living can only result in disappointment.
Love is not found, it is built. You don’t simply stumble across the things and people you love, and it’s happily ever after. You find people and things that pull at you for some reason. Then you get yourself near them. You give to them — give of yourself. You open yourself up — your heart and your mind. You cultivate love for them. You nurture a connection, a relationship, an appreciation.
Most importantly, and this cannot be overemphasized: When you find that thing you love, or that person you love — do not box them in. You do not make demands upon your connection with them. You do not smuggle in your preconceived notions, desires, expectations, and biases. You allow that love to grow by keeping all of those mental and emotional weeds out of your garden.
Whatever you love, whoever you love, nurture that connection, and let it grow. And remember that growing means changing. It means that what you love, and how you love will be different than when you first fell in love. But that’s okay. Love allows growth and change. Love enables growth and change. Love that doesn’t is, well, not love.
It’s Ongoing
I’ve made my peace with my “dream job”. I write and think about whatever tickles my fancy. I do it online, and I love it. I also work a regular job that I’ve managed to make much more interesting by finding ways to research, write, and teach as a part of it. I have cultivated a vocation that I love.
And now, after putting it off for so long, I have also begun to cultivate the love I neglected for so long. I have begun to open up, and let in the woman who offered herself and her love to me long ago. I let that garden run wild with weeds of inattention. And had I continued to let it grow, I’m sure things would be much the worse now.
What’s interesting is that I’m finding that love can be regrown. It can be revived. It can’t be made into exactly what it was before. But it can still be wonderful. But again, it takes attention, and cultivation. A love — be it for someone or something — cannot be leaned on. It must be supported and cared for.
I have gotten love wrong for most of my life. But I think I’ve finally gotten it right — mostly. I’m sure I’ll never get it completely right, but I don’t think that’s possible. If you believe in God, I think that’s the only place there’s perfect love. And what a can of worms that is.
The only way I could get love mostly right is by getting it completely wrong — for a long, long time. I don’t think my journey is unique in that way. Surely the details of how I misunderstood love, and what it cost me — those are unique. But the phenomenon of getting it wrong — tripping and falling, then getting back up with a lesson learned. That’s how we learn to love. That’s how we get love right — even if it takes us our whole lives.