Member-only story
I’ve always been a romantic.
I remember when I was in high school and I so desperately wanted a woman in my life who was worth fighting for. Someone who drew from my chest the sort of fire that compels a man to burst through the door and profess his love and desire before god and everybody.
I was 15 at the time. I couldn’t legally drive a motor vehicle but I knew what it meant to fight for love.
Or at least I thought I did. I carried that false image of blind commitment to the most sickeningly romantic love all the way through my marriage. I fought for us in all the wrong ways and ended up failing altogether.
The parts that needed fighting for went largely unattended as I waged war on things which were, in retrospect, mostly inconsequential. I fought for our date nights, but never thought to talk to a therapist about my secret porn addiction. I fought for our right to dream of better tomorrows, but wouldn’t assert healthy financial boundaries which might actually help us get there.
I was young — still in my early twenties — and in over my head.
As my marriage dissolved and I began to realize how poorly I’d loved, and the extent of the damage I’d inflicted by never thinking to first work on myself, I became a new kind of fighter.
