Rethinking Love at 50

Here I am, in this very moment, feeling cynical about love. Wondering, as Kacey Musgraves’ has, “Is love just a form of delusion?”

I have been on a journey toward love for as long as I can remember.

I left a head-over-heels love at the age of 35 because our future visions weren’t aligned. I saw marriage and babies, and he was clear when we first met that those things weren’t in the cards for him. I wasn’t sure what I wanted until 5 years in, but then it became obvious, and our breakup was inevitable. And as a girl who always follows her heart, we said a tearful goodbye.

So began 2 years of online dating and 2 years of journalling. What would, 12 years later, become a screenplay, Green Love. I was a living roadmap to self-love, with a string of dates that came to teach me that the love I was looking for was, in fact, inside of me all along.

Once I learned to live as if the love I wanted was already in my life, things moved quickly. I never did get married, but I did meet a man and fell in love, and within a year we were pregnant with our first daughter. Two years later, another daughter was born.

Their father and I had 7 years together. And while there were many wonderful times, overall as a partnership it did not feel aligned. I felt like I was taking care of another child and doing most of the work on my own. I felt alienated in my own relationship, and when I started to take this resentment out in an unhealthy way, I knew it was time to have a hard conversation and move forward as a single mother.

That was 2019.

And in 2020, something unexpected happened. When the world was falling apart, my world was quietly coming together in a way I had never imagined.

I grew into my dream job as a baker in my cottage kitchen in the forest. And I fell in love with the farmer.

Someone who inspired me in every way. So good to my girls. So good to me. Such a beautiful lifestyle.

But there were boundaries.

For 4 incredible years, we were one another’s muse. We explored one another in a way I had never experienced before. We became deeply connected.

But over time, those boundaries he built between us became the reality of the relationship.

My needs in love have always felt different. And over time, I began to feel that familiar ache again.

So over the next 2 years, we slowly let go. From conscious uncoupling, to friends with benefits, until it became clear we were no longer in alignment.

It was a conscious conversation about closing a loop.

The loop was a pattern I could finally see clearly. Accepting less than I truly needed. Staying where it was good enough, instead of honest. Convincing myself that what was offered was all that was available, while knowing my heart was asking for something that could grow.

Now it’s been a few months.

And I’ve started to date again.

But I realize how much I don’t actually like the online process. I’ve found a balance with it, but the small talk and the endless chatting leaves me drained.

And then today, I wondered:

Do I truly even want a husband to grow with? Or is it a story I was given when I was little, one I never consciously chose, but have been quietly trying to fulfill ever since?

Because sometimes I wonder if love, as I’ve been chasing it, has been less about finding someone… and more about trying to arrive somewhere I was told I was supposed to go.

And if that’s true, then the real question isn’t whether love is real.

It’s whether the version of love I’ve been pursuing was ever mine at all.

And maybe the journey isn’t about becoming less cynical about love…

Maybe it’s about becoming more honest about what I actually want it to be.

Not because I have the answer yet, but because I’m finally willing to ask the question clearly enough to find one.

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Wishing you peace, balance, happiness, vibrant health, love and abundance.

Sandy xo