The Idea Of Us

So it began like many great love stories do...and mine was devastating but real. Let’s get something clear: every love story starts with an idea… a question… a wonder. And almost every time, it ends with the same wondering question...“What if?”

It would be naïve and untruthful to say we met through some grand gesture — reaching for the same thing at the grocery store or hiking through the woods. Like many people in this modern digital era, we met on a dating app. It was the end of the pandemic. People were flying to the U.S. to get vaccinated, and my family and I were no exception.

My brother, being who he is and loving a good shopping trip, decided we should take an Uber two hours outside the city to a luxury outlet. I hate shopping. It bores me easily. So there I was, sitting in the food court of a mall outside Seattle, swiping left and right on my phone.

Until he came on.

Not a great picture. Not much information. Nothing particularly special, except for one thing. He seemed like a kind, nature-loving guy who loved to sail. And he had a warm, gentle smile. If I’m being completely honest… it was the sailing for me. That’s why I swiped right. I’ve always loved the water. I feel closest to myself near it. So a guy with a sailboat? That was someone I wanted to know more about.

We started talking. And talking. And talking. He replied to every message. We quickly left the app and exchanged numbers. It felt casual a conversation with a guy I assumed I’d chat with for a few days and then forget. But then, on my last day in the States, he said he wanted to come meet me. He lived two hours away. And I wasn’t about to leave my family to meet some guy I barely knew. Not in a million years. That’s how you get yourself killed! My Latina instincts kicked in immediately.

Still, he wanted to talk, to video chat, to really get to know me. So we did. I had a flight the next morning. But after that call, and every day that followed, even after I returned home to Mexico.. we kept talking. And the what ifs started lingering in my mind…

Talking became part of our daily routine. There I was, wondering about this guy who was easy to talk to, who kept checking in, who I genuinely enjoyed sharing my days with — and why not? — who also matched my playfulness when it came to naughty texting.

Back then, I was reconstructing my entire idea of love. I was raised to be fiercely independent — the only daughter in a Mexican family, where my dad always said I could be anything I wanted, reminding me I had the same opportunities as my brothers. And yet, he was also harder on me because I was a woman. There was unconscious pressure to be different, to be empowered, and still to meet society’s expectations.

So where was I before I met him? What did I believe about love?

I was in the middle of a shapeshifting phase. I was tired of traditional standards. Tired of believing there was only one “right” way to love. Tired of the expectation that one person should meet every single need. I was tired of seeing women needing permission to explore their own pleasure —to even buy a dildo. I wanted to believe in a kind of love where people could be both free and deeply committed.

Like the Mexican poet Jaime Sabines once said: “And I love you this way mine, but yours at the same time.” That still feels true to me. Even now, in the mess that followed, that’s still what I believe love can be.

So looking back how could I not wonder? How could I not make him my “what if”? There I was, reshaping my entire belief system around relationships. Eager to prove that love could be freer, softer, rooted in trust, not possession. And there he was easy-going, cute, funny, seemingly grounded. He had a stable job, a good relationship with his family, he had a sailboat!, and he was texting me from miles away, making plans to meet me in person after just a month of connection.

Being in the middle of my own love revolution, I had this vision of loving someone who didn’t need me, but wanted me. And someone I didn’t need, but chose to be with. And man… I really wanted to be with him. Like you can all guess… I chose him. I truly did.

So what could go wrong?

Truth is, one of the hardest things about breaking up with someone you’re still in love with and I mean one, because there are many is that the things that made you fall in love with them are still there. They still exist. In my case, it was his nature-driven spirit. His love for the water. His appetite for adventure. His reflective mind. The sound of his voice. The way he could make you feel seen and held in the little things not the grand gestures, but the small, intimate moments. Like the time we danced to Italian music after he cooked dinner for me the first time. His love for plants, and the quiet patience with which he nurtured them. His joy in experiences over possessions. The life he built for himself.. one that seemed calm, simple, even whole.

Every single thing I loved about him stayed there… for three years.

To give more context: this relationship, the one I’m now doing my best to heal from, was a long-distance relationship. It not only showed me how deeply I could love, but also how willing I was to adapt. It revealed how determined I can be when I truly want something. It showed me that I was open to not just talk about love differently, but to actually practice it in ways the world still struggles to understand, that delicate tension between devotion and freedom, between commitment and non-possessiveness.

Was I in love with him? I so freaking was. How could I not be? He was so real. We made sense. We could share simple chores like cooking and doing dishes. He understood my need for silence and eventual solitude, it was his too. He didn’t run when I told him I had diagnosed anxiety. He flew to Mexico just to meet me. He even asked me where this was leading afterward. He told me a story of a guy meeting a girl and flying to meet her, and with time, we had conversations about life. He trusted me with hard things about his past and his family. We talked about the future.. with a lot of caution and fear, but we did. We respected the ways in which we were different. He admired my career trajectory. He liked how smart I was. We had good sexual energy. We were open to trying things and being playful. We could be childish together. We met each other’s important people. And even when fights existed, we communicated. We evolved. We did our best to find our language. We loved each other, we really did.

Now I can tell, even though our love was real, it was not right. And I’m going to repeat this, because sometimes people think something has to be perfect to be real, or that real love should be easy, not challenging. That real love happens only when the people in the relationship can perfectly balance: unconditional intimacy, mutual respect and trust, shared values and goals, selflessness and sacrifice, emotional support and encouragement, growth and evolution… but it’s not. The real, right, healthy, and mature love does, not only because it has to, but because it cannot exist in any other form. But realness in love? That’s a different box to play with. There’s a duality in realness always moving from messy and unpredictable to authenticity and honesty, just like some life experiences: often chaotic but meaningful. That real feeling, however, can push you to your limits. It can make you lose your sense of reality itself… because real love can be felt in all of its core, even if it’s not the right type of real.

I’m entitled to say this, to whomever needs to hear it: your love, no matter how dysfunctional it ended up being… it was real. It was. Because I, like you, felt it, in my heart, in my mind, and in all of my body. It was real..so real that the pain feels unbearable. So real, even when you started noticing the cracks in your idea of “Us,” you decided to give more of yourself just to still be able to feel that realness. So real that you stayed longer than you should. So real you stepped into your boundaries, your values, your shame and your guilt in order to keep it. So real that it allows space in your heart to even now have compassion for the person who broke it. And yes, even now, you still feel unconditional love for them. And at least in my case… even now, maybe from a more cautious and realistic lens, I still believe in his ability to do better. To choose better. To face himself and start becoming his best version.

That is realness. It doesn’t make it right… but your love, like mine, wasn’t performative. It came from your soul.

Sadness of that acknowledgment: real doesn’t make it lasting. It doesn’t make it perfect. It doesn’t make it safe. It doesn’t make it healthy. It doesn’t make it right. And most of the time, it doesn’t make it what you need. Especially because realness and rightness are both needed for love between two people to coexist and last in time, even through conflict, and especially in joy. So let’s be clear about this: rightness can’t exist in a place where only one person is doing the work. Inevitably, and eventually, it will crash, leaving you not broken, but shattered. And lost. So lost that you would finally have no option but to face the darkness. To find another light to follow… your own.

In wanting him to see that realness so badly… I tolerated too much disrespect. Too much lying, hiding, cheating, and disloyalty. Too much explaining what I needed and not having it met. Too much speaking without being truly heard. And yet I did my best to hold space for him, to understand his needs and his limitations. I forgave. I opened doors to different ways of defining a relationship. I was flexible with my ideas. I gave so much. And ended up feeling like I was the one taking something away from him.

That’s how our story began.. not with certainty, but with belief. Not with clarity, but with wonder. With the biggest “what if” we can ask ourselves…

What if this is where I belong? What if this is the love of my life?

That was the idea of us. All of it. The spark. The depth. The evolution. The love. And also… the devastation.