Several months ago, as I was sitting at my desk at work and looking out the window into the trees and sunshine, I drifted into thought that, admittedly, had nothing to do with aviation or training manuals. I was thinking about the concept of love, more specifically, the difficulty of finding a fine balance of it in a romantic relationship.

With my ex fiancé, we’ll call him “J”, we used to always say ILTFOOY to each other, and because we were really silly, we said it like this: “ilta-fooey“. It stood for “I love the fuck out of you”. We loved each other fiercely. Both being Pisces (our birthdays were one day apart), we could easily conjure up a fantasy existence in our living room, holding each other so tightly that our bodies actually quivered.

Our love was real and very pure. The problem was that J was more possessive with his love of me. He refused to share me with anyone, and I don’t mean sexually, I mean, like, I couldn’t have friends, or wear clothes I liked; I couldn’t attend parties, and I couldn’t form bonds with other humans. Period.

In my last relationship, the words “I love you” never spilled from my partner’s lips. And I waited. Two and a half years. At first I thought he was hesitant or fearful to say it. The more time that passed, however, I started to realize that maybe he just didn’t love me. Maybe he didn’t know how.

Being pulled into a disproportionate relationship, where all the love was on my side, made me miserable. It hurts more than anything to constantly feel like you want to express yourself with all of the affection welling up inside of you, but you can’t. I was ball-gagged and bound in my own relationship, which resulted in a skewed perception of myself and the constant wondering of what was wrong with me?

I’m terribly afraid that I’ll never find that balance. It seems like such a delicate thing. Any gust of wind can just swoop it up and carry it away. At any moment. That’s what relationships feel like to me, because I was involved in so many wrong ones. Will I ever get it right?

In the short period of time that my gaze fell upon the glistening snow, as we were deep into winter in New England, I realized that I am used to loving more. J’s love may have been more exclusive and intense, but I loved him so unconditionally that I still do to this day and always will. My love for the last guy was ineffable in the truest sense, since I could never express it to him.

Would I rather love more or be loved more?

Thinking about it, I had decided that I’m probably always going to be the one who loves more. I just made myself content to believe that. But, in revisiting that thought today, I really want to know what it’s like to be loved with the same level of compassion and respect as I give. A mutual, reciprocal connection. I never want to fear that I am being loved less. Thought of less. Fantasized about only occasionally.

I want heavily-panting, passionate, heart-exploding love.

I’m always going to love intensely. It’s up to the future love of my life to ascertain whether he can step up and match me.