"A 'Forsaking All Others' Kind Of Love"

“...I am engaged to the most wonderful person I have ever met….. she is the love of my life. And because of this I feel it would be best if we didn't communicate any further”

I’ve been carrying the phrase “a ‘forsaking all others’ kind of love” around in my head for the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's a line from a country-western song. I don’t know exactly what put it there; be it an emerging curiosity to know what that kind of love would look like, or the thought that perhaps I have recently experienced a twinge of what it might actually feel like. In the last couple of days though, I think the answer to what it might smell like may have been delivered directly into my in-box.

I live in a part of the country where I am very far-removed from most of the people who have been important to me over the years. Some I’ve stayed in touch with, others have retreated into to the misty environs of my memory. Recently, either through their efforts or in some cases mine, I’ve found myself corresponding with several friends that I haven’t communicated with in years. Once you get the ball rolling, the curiosity about what’s happened to various folks kind of takes hold. Mostly it’s been a good experience, but in one case, it's definitely been an eye-opening disaster.

When I was 29, I was living with a man that I probably had absolutely no business being with. He wasn’t crazy, he wasn’t particularly mean, but we just weren’t right together. The night before I moved in with him he spent the night with a co-worker. (I discovered this on the day of the move). When we broke up, he moved out while I was at work and took my dog. Bracketed between these events, my treatment of him was not especially kind, either. We eventually made our peace and remained friends. Why not? In lieu of family, sustaining positive connections with friends becomes very important. I'm usually not big on holding a grudge. Usually......

Fast forward about 26 years. His wife, a woman he’d met just about the time we broke up, died last year. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to wrangle a phone number or email address from J, so that I could let him know how sorry I was. Last week, contact was accomplished. We exchanged a few emails. One afternoon when I was home, I decided to call. The conversation was pleasant. He told me about his new home, his new girlfriend and how life was generally treating him well. Gradually, and off in the background, I began to hear the sound of another conversation being conducted simultaneously with ours. Suddenly he had to go. He'd call me later.

The next day, I received an email which contained the quote at the beginning of this post. I was stunned. Hurt. You name it. Then I had to laugh; at least a bit. If the “love of your life” can’t tolerate a sincere expression of sympathy over the loss of your wife from a friend over 2000 miles away, whose dog you crept out of the house with in 1979; then what kind of love is that exactly? Why it's simply one really lame example of a 'forsaking all others' kind of love and I wish them all the happiness in the world, 'until death doth them part'. Whenever that happens however, I will not be placing another call.