The One
Love. Such a simple word that can mean so many different things to different people. I thought I knew what it meant — as girls, we all believe we do thanks to Disney — but I found out my definition was completely and utterly skewed.
Having this ideal of a prince charming who will come on a white horse and sweep me off my feet with one kiss was the main idea I had of love throughout my teens. Needless to say, when my first long-term relationship ended at the age of 18, I was completely distraught. “I was convinced we were going to get married!” thought my once-naïve self. I later found out I would say that about every single man I ever dated.
Following that bout was a series of long-term relationships throughout my 20s. I was what one would call a “serial dater”, attempting to find a man who could fill a void in my life no one else but myself could actually fill. Having a pretty much absent father during my childhood, I was unconsciously sure that any man I came across and “liked enough” would be sufficient to fill those big shoes.
But the more I tried, the more I failed, slowly realising that my intention may have been in the wrong place to start with. In everything you do, intention is what will dictate the outcome, without fail.
I dated older and younger, blond and dark haired, tall and short, Christian and Muslim — I didn’t discriminate in my search for “The One”. But it took me a while to take notice that I was “The Actual One” for me. And it was only until I understood that, that I was able to meet my match.
After a decade-long of serial dating, and my patience running low — not to mention society reminding me that my biological clock was constantly ticking, I wrongly thought I had found “The One”. A kind, smart and hard-working man, whose nationality and religion correlated with my own — major bingo in this part of the world (the Middle East, for those unaware of my location).
We dated for two years before getting engaged and as good-hearted as he was, a divine intervention made me second-guess our compatibility. When you get engaged in this region, and in many parts of the world, it is almost like you’ve made it in life. And that is exactly how I had felt.
As the “congratulations” messages started to pour in, my relief started to pour out. “That’s it, I found him!”, I thought to myself, as if I had been on a witch-hunt for 30 years. But with time, and once the superficial societal dust had settled, I quickly came to realise a glitch in the system. The more I was being told that the engagement period was meant to be “the best time of your life”, the more I started to notice it was quite the opposite.
We were engaged for 8 months, filled with daily fights that made me question the decision in itself. The closer we came to our wedding date, the more I stayed up at night wondering if this was the life I had wanted for myself. We may have been near identical on paper, but we couldn’t have been any more different in real life — and I don’t mean the good kind of different.
Peer pressure around marriage is a real issue, especially for young Arab women. It’s almost like there is a general consensus that you are nearing your expiration date once you hit 30 and will just be disposable after that. “All the good ones go by then”, I’d hear some friends say. I later came to realise that it couldn’t be any farther from the truth. These old stigmas and beliefs that we are all in a global race to get married, to have children, to have more children and to die, are so faulty it hurts. We no longer live in the 1950s, when a woman’s sole purpose in life is to reproduce and raise children. Today, women work, they have careers and aspirations, they’re driven, and I like to think they are as equal as can be to their male counterparts.
As good-hearted as my ex was, we were completely incompatible and barely saw any of the foundational elements of a relationship eye-to-eye. It was only when the clock struck 4 months before our wedding date that we realised how alarming our situation was.
In reality, I had given him a deadline — propose after two years of dating or I’m out. Who wants to get married to that? Might as well have proposed to myself, in all honesty. I had orchestrated the whole thing and was more infatuated with the idea of getting married than marriage itself. My main driver was ticking the wedding box, and not the husband that came with it. I almost viewed him, subconsciously at the time, as the small ‘terms and conditions’ box at the bottom of the contract that nobody ever reads. Shocking, to say the least.
After much analysis, I figured that he had only proposed to make me happy and to avoid losing me. But marriage shouldn’t be a charity case. This is the rest of your life you’re talking about. I cannot fault him, though — the pressure I had put on him was colossal. I think I even forced tears of joy when he did end up proposing. Maybe my tears were just tears of despair and relief, thinking I had finally ended my lifelong search for a partner and joining the “cool club” of those engaged. I thought my race had ultimately ended.
I’m not sure by which stroke of luck or divine intervention we ended our relationship, but I am thankful we did before we went through with it. I even remember thinking I could just go through with it and divorce afterwards, to avoid disappointing so many people who had already booked their trip. Who thinks like that? Apparently, I later learned, many people do, unfortunately. To make matters worse, divorce in Greek Orthodox marriages are considered quite difficult and can take years to go through. Come to think of it, that was definitely a divine intervention.
But even though we both agreed, after much thought, that none of this should go through, the break-up was still tough. We are only human, after all, and I will always have so much respect and love for him as a human being.
Many feelings arose from that break-up: anger towards men in general and myself, disgust towards the institution of marriage, and general hatred towards life. That year was one of my lowest ones to date, yet one when many beautiful practices started to emerge as well, including therapy and energy healing.
I discovered so much about myself, and how flawed my ideas of marriage and a husband were. I discovered I was completely blind to who I was as a person, having serial dated for at least 15 years, and I was (reluctantly) ready to embark on the scary, yet enriching experience of learning who Caline actually was.
I remember attending my best friend’s wedding a month after the break-up — the first wedding I had ever attended on my own. Needless to say, I was more anxious than the bride herself. I was fearful of being judged, of being on my own, with this person I had “lived with” for 30 years but had no clue who she was or what she enjoyed doing. I also remember spending my first weekend as a single woman, and my need to sit on the couch and ask myself: “What would *you* like to do today?”
I had never asked myself that question, having mastered the art of being moulded to what my partner wanted and enjoyed doing. I had never understood the concept of give-and-take, and later came to terms with the fact that every relationship had blown up in my face because, as we say in French, “chasse le naturel, il revient au galop” (translating into “drive out what comes naturally and it comes back galloping” or in other words: “a leopard cannot change its spots”). It basically means that you can lie to everyone but yourself and your true nature will always, always prevail, especially when you ignore it.
That weekend, it took me 30 minutes to answer that question. And as uncomfortable as the feeling was of just sitting with myself for days on end, with time and practice, I started to unravel a number of mysteries that explained different behaviours and patterns in my life. I learned what I enjoyed doing. I learned to love myself — a practice that took me years to reach. Who knew you could dislike the one person you live with, day in day out? I realised I was never taught to love myself, I never knew how to nor the importance behind it. I realised, with time, that “mieux vaut être seul que mal accompagné” (“better to be alone than badly accompanied”) and I realised that I never actually needed a man — or anyone for that matter — to define or validate who I was as a person.
You, and only you, are enough and only when you learn to love yourself, truly and deeply, can you be in a position to offer love to another. And that was one of my most meaningful lessons to date.
