Pain-stained Journals | Anthology

3 | Betrayed by love

Being in love is the greatest feeling you can ever feel, but it doesn't stay forever. As everyone knows, love tends to lose its spark after time. And so, it was for me and my wife. I got to learn the hard way that love isn't like all the stories that happen in romance books.

When we look at animals, we don't see love. We see loyalty. And we can learn the best from animals. Valuing each other qualities and staying with that one person for a lifetime is loyalty. My wife gave me love. She tried hard to maintain it throughout the years. But there was this crack of the moment, and it all felt down.

Love is like card play. You play out your best cards to maintain your game. The enemy is your life. Your relationship depends on whether you win that round. When you give out your best card, soon later you are left with nothing. Loving someone so hard that you play with aces, kings, and queens, and you are left with dust. Maintaining your relationship is giving out your best, but it all loses its spark after some time, just like a card play. Card play becomes boring just like love after some time. You suddenly, stop in your tracks and want to end it for good. Your life is your enemy in this case because if it gives out better cards, then you lose. Lose your love to someone. Every card in a love play represents different actions, gestures, feelings. If you give out less, you lose easier.

My wife was playing in the same team, but when the fighting's started, we were opponents. I was no longer fighting life; I was fighting her.

Loyalty is when you look at the lion and see his mate. She stays with him; he stays with her. We don't see feelings there; we see a bond that is for a lifetime. Not many people know this because they live a clueless life without the perception of what is real and what is not.

Love is everything, right? I doubt that. Because if it were everything, why did my wife leave me? Left me like a used napkin after a meal. After she had eaten the good parts, she just used a napkin and left.

Loyalty is more than a feeling; it is a state. When you are loyal, you accept, and you stay. Some may say it is cold, that it is too fixed. Whereas those words are true, they are just a bit of what is loyalty in pure form.

Is it my looks, are those my actions that she didn't like? I wonder because we swore an oath that we shall be bonded forever. I had mistaken everything. Not only that, but I was wrong about her. Her smile was never as bright as the sun, and I noticed it just later.

When that smile that gave me breathing before, turned cold and distant, I thought I was blind again. I decided to name it that way because blindness is neutral and so was my attitude towards all of this.

I didn't love my wife; however, I was loyal. When one stops loving the other, there is a crisis and both end up hurt. A broken heart hurts less than a broken bond. The heart is just a thing inside our bodies whereas bond is everything more. Bond is meant to be unbreakable. It is like you thighed yourself with that one person you decided to be yours forever. And she leaves. When that bond breaks it is the most intense feeling in the world because you feel it both on an emotional and physical level. Being without a leg or arm is not comparable to the pain you feel when your other half suddenly cuts off. Everything is harder without that other part. Your life joy, ambitions, passions all fade because you got no one to share it with.

This was a case with me and my wife. She broke the bond that was never meant to be broken, to start that desired love spark with somebody else.

She searches for a lover; I search for a mate.

The lover is oriented with just feelings. You breathe your feelings into the other persons' heart and wait out for the return. Where loyalty is something much more, it doesn't end on just a feeling.

You are loyal

or

You are in love

Those words signify a difference between those two states. Loyalty is much more involved where love is just a state you are in, not a quality you possess.

My wife used to say "I love you" countless times. When she should be saying "I am loyal to you". People mistake loyalty as one of the love qualities. They say you should be loyal to be in love, making that word seem like a subcategory.

Loyalty is a state in which you are with the other person. Through highs and lows, you are always by your soulmate's side.

Breathing in passions into the lungs of the other person are what it is all about. Caring in all aspects of life, just being with that person is loyalty.

I was with my wife when she drank, with her when she cried, with her when she smiled. Being with her gave me a sense of self-worth because I knew that I am giving her my self-worth. She betrayed my trust and shadowed my ambitions by saying she sees me in another career. Trusting her was my greatest mistake.

I knew that I was young and stupid when I met her. She was there standing during my game in high school and when she looked me in the eye, I saw that spark. I felt that spark in my entire body and wanted to catch it to the fullest.

She never meant to have it for a lifetime. When she said it is love at first sight, I believed her. It was easier that way. I expected a lot from our relationship. Seeing a thousand options and a thousand chances I can accomplish made me a slave to her.

When loyalty is badly settled, it becomes slavery. You become a slave to be with that person at every chance you get. Some get accustomed to feeling like a slave and stay in toxic relationships just because of wanting to be in one.

Love is unhealthy. I was betrayed by love, once I loved someone it was not enough. I cared for my wife that deeply I poured my heart and soul into her every chance I got. In the end, I didn't blame her, she was furious that our relationship lost the needed spark. Initiating a flame once again comes with responsibilities, just like everything in the world. Maintaining that initiated flame is hard because it is much more complicated and in some cases fake.

I watched the documentary on wolves once. They stay in the pack, they mate, and they live on. Being with someone is making a pack. A one-on-one pack that is supposed to never be betrayed by each of them.

We can learn a lot from the past and animals. My wife never understood loyalty and being with someone who understands it is hard because it is your way of living.

Love is a way of feeling.

Loyalty is a way of living.

Giving the other person your life should always come with the other person doing the same. I listened to my wife saying hers "I love you's" and I never saw what was wrong. Everything was wrong, and I brought it all together in my head during our last fight.

She said she loved me and that I didn't love her because I am too cold. Seeing no end in this I said the truth and decided to stay silent afterwards. I said: "I am loyal to you, yet I have never known that until this moment". She gave me an insight into what love is and how I never want to be in one.

Love is ordinary and mainstream. Whereas loyalty tends to be mistaken and unknown.

I am glad I was loyal to you, my wife. Thank you for not being in my heart but in my life.