Do quality men event exist?

For Valentine’s Day, Hemal was out of town. He travels off to Toronto every week for work. He flew in last Friday, the day after V-day, and he had bought tickets to see the Broadway musical, Wicked. It was off the hook! I loved the musical. All I had to say is “we aren’t doing anything romantic” and boom! He is booking tickets! Yes, I find a musical romantic. However, it wasn’t always like this…

 

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Hemal and I met in college and were together for 4 years, and around Christmastime in that 4th year I thought he was going to propose. He was coming home with me to Cincinnati for the holidays, where I grew up. And he calls me up and says, “I am no longer coming -- I haven’t been happy for a while and I need a break.” I was shocked -- I didn’t understand. I immediately started crying and was utterly devastated.

The months that followed were HARD -- probably the hardest moments I had ever experienced in love. I wanted him back. I tried to call him, email him, send presents, and convince him why we should be together and why I was the one for him. Yes, the sane girl went insane during those months.

 

I mourned, I wept, I ugly cried, I incessantly talked about our relationship and analyzed what went wrong in my head over and over again. I was depressed. I am one of those people that doesn’t try to distract herself from feeling bad. I dive right into my feelings and allow them to flow until I am done feeling. Every man I met and saw during that time wasn’t good enough, wasn’t available, or simply said -- just didn’t make the cut. It made me even more depressed if what I wanted was even possible.

Then, 6 months after the break up, my friends and I went on a girls vacay. Yup, 4 of my closest and dearest girlfriends flew down to Miami and had a blast. One night we were at a beautiful outdoor club, and there was this man across the room that I was like OMG he is totally hot. I kept eyeing him up and shot him a smile he smiled back. And then a friend of mine and I went up to him -- she helped -- and we started chatting.

 

He was Italian and ummm super hot. He ended up hanging out with us, and eventually he and I went off to a private cabana to chat. ;) It was hilarious because he spoke little English and I spoke no Italian.

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We hung out until the sun came up, and I felt like I had my groove back! Something shifted. He wasn’t anything that I was looking for longterm (other than hunky) but the experience of meeting and connecting with someone I thought was hot shifted me.

 

And truth be told … All it takes is one experience for a belief to be proven otherwise. 

After Miami I felt I was ready -- ready to date again, meet men, and insert myself back into the love world. When I got home, I started to see eligible men around me, where before there had been none.

 

The idea that no good men existed changed, and it had everything to do with shifting my perspective and experiencing something different. When I was depressed, I was looking for reasons to stay that way: reasons to prove that what I had with Hemal was the only and greatest thing. When I was ready to stop believing that, I started seeing possibility!

This week’s Lovework: