“Give me a text when you’re home” he said before leaning in to give me a kiss on the cheek. Oh no, here we were again… hope. I knew this could go one of two ways – I would be texting him when I got home, or I would be lost under the weight of that crushing love low. I had felt this feeling a hundred times before, the emotional preparation for the looming intimacy detach. I was crazy about him, but at the same time, he was driving me crazy.
I know we’ve all experienced the lows. I’ve had it with numerous relationships – You get close before it all comes crashing down. And it’s bloody crap. No matter what the intimacy is, sexual or not, nothing hits harder than the sudden loss of it sometime later. What a day to be hungover, bloated and emotionally dumped, wonderful!
There have been key moments for me, as I’m sure there has been for you, when I have looked at a guy I care about and just thought: Why am I doing this to myself? I can picture the bedrooms, the hallways, the smoking areas where these moments took place. We’ve all experienced it, that exhilarating romantic high before the sudden drop, but why are we so familiar with the intimacy drop? When it’s so real you can almost still hear the door closing behind you, your loss of words when the girls text: “How did it go?” Why can I still feel that knot in my stomach when I think about these times?
I think we all fear the lows, it’s having a knock-on impact. Our low becomes someone else’s wall to break down. However, every cloud really does have a silver lining, we always power through these lows, and we learn. Some people are bigger lessons than others, that knot in your stomach is your body speaking to you.
The love lows are great lessons, they’re the art of the world. Sometimes we know the lows are inevitable if we walk this certain path, but we do it anyway. On reflection, they’re a necessary part of feeling. We need the shutting door to know the warmth of the opening ones, we know confused eyes because we are yet to meet the ones that are sparkling with certainty. So if you’ve felt the love lows, as I’m sure you have – whether it’s an ignored text after a night of intimacy, an uncertain response to a question about the future, or the end before anything has begun, I admire you. I admire you for putting your heart out there, for grasping a moment your heart was hungering for. Don’t ever beat yourself up for feeling, that’s something the world is lacking at the moment. Listen to the door, remember his confused eyes, accept the knot, get your nails done and remember who the hell you are.
