For those who have loved and lost, as oh so many have, there’s often talk of “trying to find that feeling again” or being worried that “there won’t be anyone like him again”.
Talk like that is, realistically speaking, useless.
We are different every minute of the day–always changing based on internal and external stimuli. The same is true of everyone else we interact with. If we’re not the same minute-to-minute, we’re definitely not the same year-to-year. And if we’re talking about interaction with another person… well, there’s very little “the same” even if you’ve been with that other person forever.
Because we’re ever-evolving and because everyone else is, too, you are never going to recapture exactly the same feeling as some point in the past. You are never going to find someone like the (mostly mythical) person you remember your ex being.
(Yes, I say “mostly mythical” because our minds change things on us all the time. If we’re longing for “the good old days” those days will seem all the more good. If we’re pining away over an ex, we’re more than likely going to forget or gloss over all the bad times that lead up to them being an ex.)
If you spend all your time and energy trying to reclaim something that is impossible to reclaim, you will constantly be disappointed and exhausted.
I’ve seen this again and again. I’ve done this myself more times than I’d care to count. It’s natural and it’s human.
But we have to be aware that we do things like this so we can work to change our wasteful and self-destructive patterns.
The feelings we have for others are beyond comparable to one another. Each is unique and rich and valid in its own way. It is possible–and more common than most think–to have equally strong feelings for multiple people. It’s one of the bigger sources of internal dissonance we run into. “I can’t possibly feel that way…”
Bottom line is, we all have to realize that, yes, we are never going to replace that person who’s no longer part of our lives. We don’t need to. We’ll create something different with someone else–or ourselves. Something that will be different, but give us a similar satisfaction, a similar rush, a similar joy.
Love is never the same twice. And trying to make it be is a recipe for dissatisfaction.
