In my years, I have met some very interesting women. Some who are extremely successful; some who are influential within their communities; some who want to be stay-at-home mothers; and some who don’t ever see themselves having children or getting married. Although these types of women have different agendas there is one common denominator among all of them. They all have loved and been severely hurt and disappointed at some point in their lives. Some of them have been lucky enough to have gone through it only once. The loss of love to a woman is earth shattering. It shakes us to our core.
On the opposite side, I know men who have loved extremely hard and they too have had their hearts broken or were too immature to handle the love that they were given and found a way to screw it up. So far, that seems to be the score for some of the men that I know. So yes, men love just as hard as women do, but they handle it differently. What do they do? They move on rather quickly. This only leaves women wondering what they did wrong, what do other women have that they don’t have, did they not love hard enough, and are we no longer attractive. We question our entire existence when our love is on to the next one and yet we can’t seem to make it out of bed. But if you ask a man the reason for this reaction, more than likely he will say, “We just have to keep it moving”. I envy that ability so much that I wish to someday possess it as a characteristic trait that embeds in my DNA structure.
Women are different. Sure we go through a period of extreme sadness of our loss. When a significant relationship has ended there is a grievance process that women go through that men don’t seem to understand. The dreams that we had with someone, the life that we envisioned, the love that we shared, the secrets that we swore we would never tell anyone, the permission to not only invade our hearts but our bodies have been allowed, and the ending of a very important friendship with our very best friend has ended. So what do we do when this happens? We cry. Everyday. For weeks and sometimes months. We are paralyzed to move forward. All of this sadness is taking place while on the other side of town, your “best friend” has “kept it moving”.
But like all things, pain comes to an end with time and space. The one thing about women is that when we get over things, we don’t look back. It’s over. And then when this freedom occurs we become angry at ourselves for allowing such BS to have even taken place. We could look at that old friend and feel nothing and go on in our merry lives only to open our chests and ready to expose our hearts yet again.
So here we are. Both male and female who loves and has loved with the only difference is the reaction once it has ended. As I am writing this article I am left wondering some very interesting questions. When in our relationships do we (women) give so much power to our men to have such control over us? Do men have a moment later in life where they stop to think about what they gave up? Lastly, How does these losses effect us in our later relationships?
