Is happiness supposed to feel like this?

“She received a message from a friend of hers that she will be coming to spend the holidays near the city where she was living. They worked together a few years ago, and they always got along with each other. After she moved from Germany, they stayed in contact. They were not talking so often but the respect and kindness for each other were still there.

After she finished her work, on a Friday evening, she packed her stuff for the weekend and drove there. She arrived late in the evening, but they have been waiting for her to have dinner together. They were such a nice family: the mother – her crazy, funny friend, the father – a nice guy, very respectful, and a beautiful baby – the highlight of the house. He was a sweet little baby and she immediately fell for him. Babies are so innocent, so pure, so happy with little things and a bit of attention.

They had dinner and a nice glass of wine looking at the sea – the location was amazing, and she was always happy to see again people from her past. She remembers they had a lot of fun while working together.

She remembers a talk they had regarding her relationship. Her friend was happy with her boyfriend. He was amazing, she could not ask for more. She had a comfy life, nothing was missing, they were going on holidays every time they wanted, no worries to pay the bills at the end of the month. The only issue they had was that, due to an extreme stressful working life style, they could not be intimate with each other as often as they would have wished for. The desire to be with each other, to feel the other, was always there, but the body was not working anymore according to the mind.

They were, more or less, still in the beginning of their relationship, so with a good communication and some visits to a therapist you could work through every problem that might appear on the way. They loved each other and they still do. They have now a beautiful baby together.

The night ended after a long conversation to catch up, and they all went to sleep. She was feeling blessed for the life she had and the people she met along her way. The next day, while enjoying a sunny day, her friend comes to her and they go and have a walk together. They started talking again about the same subject. Sadly, nothing had changed.

They tried to work on it, and they could do it for a while, the result was the baby. But their sexual life was almost nonexistent.  The time he spent at work practically sucked up all his energy and mess with his mind in such a way that he wasn’t capable of enjoying that part of him anymore. You could say that he almost gave up and his priorities completely changed now. Along with him, his now wife, was not able of enjoying that neither.

In this period, when the baby was still very small, these moments of love and affection between a couple, of desire and pleasure, were totally missing and put in the background, like they have decided to burry this part of them in a box and throw it away. 

The most surprising thing to hear from her friend was she thought maybe their life, as a couple, was supposed to be like this, not enjoying this part of them, maybe they weren’t born with the purpose of enjoying life this way and with this kind of moments of intimacy.

You could see that she almost gave up. You could see that she was searching to accept the situation the way it was. You could see she was searching to explain, in a rational way what was happening, and to be for her, the acceptance of her faith. You could see that she was not searching for solutions anymore and she was not blaming anyone for that.

You could see that she strongly wanted to believe that the love she felt for him and for her small family they had built together, as a feeling, was stronger and higher than the desire to show love sexually, the love you express with your entire body, with each vibration you feel you belong entirely to the other person and the other person belongs entirely, with body and soul, to you.”

I am here right now, getting cozy and warm in a corner of my room because autumn is slowly coming, the days are shorter, and the nights are longer, and much darker.

And I am getting lost between my thoughts, and ideas, and opinions. Love is strong, without any doubt, and when we are in love with a person and when we love someone, we are willing to go through many things and give up many things to be together with that person.

I have learned with time that being in love and love someone are two different things. Being in love, under my own definition, is like the state of your body of being under drugs: everything is beautiful, every moment is happiness, every moment is pleasure. Mind has nothing to do there and you just see and feel the beautiful things.

Loving someone, again, under my own definition, is when you find a balance between your heart and mind and you are being able to clearly see the good and the bad stuff and make decisions based on facts, and not impulsively like you tend to do when you are in love.

Until which point can you love someone? Until which point can you sacrifice, parts of yourself, in order to be with the other person? Is love more powerful than desire? Are we able to “kill” a part of ourselves, in my opinion essential, to preserve the lifestyle, the comfort that we have? Until which point are we ready to trick our mind and to convince ourselves that we are happy even if we are not feeling complete? Even though we know something is missing. Are we capable of loving more the person that is sitting next to us than ourselves?

Throughout my life I found the answer to all these questions, and I’m sure that the future will make me change my way of thinking because I will have different experiences from my past, but what I firmly believe is that love it is about making compromises, but not to sacrifice yourself.

Do you have the answers to these questions? How your story sounds like?

Version in Spanish: https://journeywithmada.com/historia-nr-16/

Version in Romanian: https://journeywithmada.com/povestea-nr-16/