I don’t speak on romantic love very often. Frankly, it’s not a subject in which I possess any positive expertise.

If you were to ask my ex-husband, he would tell you it’s because I am inherently unlovable. He claimed that if anyone were to truly get to know the real me, they wouldn’t be able to stand me. While his words are dripping with deliberate cruelty, I’ve come to a point in my life where I don’t necessarily think his conclusion was entirely wrong. His reasoning, however, was toxic.

I am broaching 50 years old now. I wasted a massive portion of my younger years married to mean, and my subsequent experiences in the arena of love have been anything but encouraging.

The Refueling Station

For most of my adult life, I haven’t been a partner. I’ve been a band-aid. I was the emotional refueling station for men recovering from previous breakups. Time and time again, once they were done using me as a battery pack to restore their own confidence, they quickly moved on. They realized they could do “better”—find someone younger, someone more conventionally beautiful, and, of course, someone more socially acceptable.

Geometry, geography, and a strict upbringing played their parts in this cycle. I grew up with old-school, strict parents who absolutely did not allow dating, meaning I entered the arena later in life without a map. On top of that, being raised in a traditional Italian community and living primarily in all-white neighborhoods, the pickings were slim if I wanted to meet men of different ethnicities.

Beyond that, the media format of my youth conditioned me. All the good-looking guys on TV or in the movies were white. Think The Outsiders. Good-looking bunch of guys, no? Truthfully, that environment shaped what I found attractive as a young woman, and it’s what I still find attractive today. I dated a version of every single one of them.

But from a romantic standpoint, that preference has felt like a curse. More than a few men explicitly let me know that I was the outsider. I was not suitable to bring home to mom and dad, let alone anywhere near Nonna.

Eventually, the weight of it all became too heavy, and I just stopped trying. I stopped dating. I stopped looking. Instead, I started to take all that love that had nowhere else to go, and I gave it to myself.

Facing the Mirror

With every passing year, I become entirely unbothered by the lack of it all. I’ve just accepted that a great love outside of what I offer myself isn’t in the cards. And honestly? I love my independence. Is it lonely at times? Sure. I feel a little bit like a freak every once in a while knowing that I won’t feel a partner’s touch.

But then I look around at the alternative.

Almost every girlfriend I’ve ever had who is in a committed relationship absolutely loves to complain about her boyfriend or husband. It eventually got to the point where I just stopped being friends with many of them—hell, almost all of them. I couldn’t sit through the endless, obsessive cycles of resentment anymore.

The Cost of Free Venting

I have exactly one friend left from that world who doesn’t utter a single toxic word about her counterpart. When she does complain, it’s modest, normal, and human. Because let’s be honest: who wouldn’t get a little sick of dealing with the exact same human being day in and day out for decades? Men complain too, and so did I when I was sitting in that rickety seat. That part is normal.

But the obsessive, chronic misery I kept witnessing? That isn’t for me. What really is the point of bending yourself into a pretzel for a partnership if it’s just for show, devoid of genuine peace, and fueled by constant complaints?

Besides, this current level-up is entirely different. I am hyper-aware of the passage of time. To quote the iconic Truvy from Steel Magnolias: “Time marches on and sooner or later it realizes that it is marchin’ across my face.”

Much of my youthful, physical beauty is gone. The dark circles under my eyes have grown deeper, and the collagen in my face is evaporating more each day. With the exception of my scalp, the most prolific hair growth on my body is now on my damn chin.

The Parking Lot Reckoning

The turning point came with the last man I loved. Without my knowledge, he traded me in for a gorgeous, younger woman. And when I say gorgeous, I mean gorgeous—hell, I may have started batting for the other side if she took an interest in me, that’s how stunning she was.

I will never forget the day I spotted them together, courtesy of the universe’s merciful yet painful arrangement. They were blissfully happy, practically skipping through a parking lot with a shopping cart filled with more products than I had ever seen him allow himself to buy.

Fables and Fuel Stations

When he was with me, he played the part of a frugal man of meager means. Oh, the fables I foolishly believed. He made me smile; I liked his stories, I found his anxiousness endearing, and best of all, I was never afraid to fall asleep in his presence.

He never bought me a single thing, save for a beverage he grumbled about purchasing. I didn’t mind; I knew his kind, and I had plenty of my own money. That’s not why I loved him.

Seeing her made me realize I was toast. It might sound sick, but in a way, I was proud of him for going after what he needed, while I had settled for a supposedly “poor boy” just because he made me laugh. But alas, I had merely been another jet pack to help him refuel from his last breakup and move on, reenergized, to empty his pockets for the apple of his eye.

He saw me standing there in the parking lot, too. His face flashed with a smug look, followed quickly by a flicker of nervousness. I froze. I looked at her—beautiful blonde hair blowing in the wind, smiling from ear to ear—and then I looked back at him. Doing nothing more, I just stood there. And in that exact frozen moment, the cycle broke.

I do not doubt that it was by God’s design. He had something more, something entirely different planned for me. He must have—because it hurt like a bitch.

Truth, Order, and the Pages

That was the day I stopped dating. I stopped wearing makeup for the most part. I stopped going out. Socializing came to a halt, and I just hit the books.

I traded the unpredictable physics of human rejection for the absolute certainty of logic, data, and literature. The energy I used to spend keeping temporary men afloat was redirected, and I poured it entirely into my own mind.

To be fair, I am not poo-pooing love altogether. Let’s be real: with my hormones changing and shifting gears, it is technically easier to navigate romantic life with far less biological drive. Barring all the trauma, if a genuine Romeo were to waltz through my door right now, I wouldn’t be averse to it. I haven’t built a wall out of cynicism.

Choosing Peace Over Romance

I just stopped looking. My experiences haven’t made me cold; they have just made me a whole hell of a lot more discerning about who and what I pour my sacred energy into.

People talk about the loneliness of giving up on the chase, but they rarely talk about the profound peace that replaces it. I chose truth and order over chaos and rejection.

The books have never hurt me. The books have never used me. Unlike the men who took until I was empty, the books always give back.

Like I said, I don’t speak on romantic love that much because, as you can see, there’s nothing but heartbreak to report from my time in the trenches. Even still, I loved them all—my own real-life versions of Johnny, Sodapop, Ponyboy, Darry, Dallas, and Two-Bit.

I suppose I ended up falling in love with all the Greasers because, well… I married a Soc first, and that didn’t work out so great either. The Socs wanted someone acceptable for show, and the Greasers just needed a refueling station to patch up their wounds before they kept riding. Turns out, I didn’t need to belong to either side of the tracks.

Today, the story belongs to me.