Augustine- love the love of the love

I’ve had my heart broken a few times from either unrequited love or incompatibility. The first, and hopefully last three times, were with men who were too similar to me– we had intense artistic and intellectual similarities that drew us to each other. Unfortunately with each, after many months of discussion, we found that despite my best efforts, there wasn’t much more there to root us to each other.

Each time I was angry when I realized that the love I was cherishing would not continue. I felt the love I had to give was being waisted. After the first time this happened, I needed to channel my love— but I didn’t know how to now that the vessel I was hoping to deposit it was gone.

And then I read a section of Augustine’s Confessions–




It is possible I use this lesson as a way to placate myself when I have nothing more romantic on which to focus. But it has helped me to realize that always, the passion we have for another is actually a passion for something beyond the other, something they can only mirror–a love greater than them. And so when that person disappoints me, the love does not disappoint me, because the love did not belong to them from the beginning. I get to keep the love. I get to grow in that love. It didn’t leave, and it doesn’t belong to me.