One is the loneliest number

Something most of us discover eventually is that it's hard to go through the world alone. There are all kinds of situations and circumstances where we need other people for love, support, compassion, understanding, sympathy and a shared walk through this unpredictable world we live in. We're happiest when we have someone to share the good times as well as the bad times with.

A lot of people are single and they say, at least to other people, that they're happy they are because it uncomplicates their lives.

They're able to do what they want to do when they want to do it without needing anybody else's permission or participation. That argument has some merit I suppose but a lot of demerits too, especially if they're single because someone has left them behind.

It's heartbreaking to have love snatched away from you. One day you're the king of the world because you know you have someone by your side who will love you forever and the next day they're gone and you face the world alone. One day you have a human being to snuggle up with that shares your world with you and the next day there's nothing there but an empty pillow.

We make all kinds of promises to each other we don't know if we can keep or not. We use words like forever and eternity and til the day I die and then strangle and kill those words by saying we meant them when we said them but we don't mean them anymore.

That's why being alone is so painful to some. If you've never been totally and completely in love with someone, maybe it's not so bad to be alone because you don't know what you're missing.

But when you've planned out your whole life with someone else in it and then they're not anymore, it's a devastating proposition.

When we talk about love and relationships in the classes I teach, I tell my students the most dangerous thing about being in love is that we can't make somebody else love us and even when they say they say they do, we can never really be sure that they do. Anybody can say anything and some are a lot better at lying than others. Some students suggest that the way we know if someone really loves us or not is if their actions support their words. But that doesn't always work either. Sometimes their actions support their words right up until the moment they leave us.

And even when we understand why people make the decisions they make because of their upbringing and the life they've lived up until now, that doesn't make it any easier to take when we're forsaken. And it doesn't make the love we have for them go away.

So they embark on a new life or go back to an old one and we're left holding the bag, feeling much less confident of our place in the world because the love of our life chose someone else over us; someone we know in our hearts can never give them anything close to the peace, contentment, excitement and happiness we could have.

And if that happens to you, be prepared for your well-meaning friends who will tell you to forget about that person and get on with your life. That advice rings hollow, even when it's well meant, because they don't know the pain you're feeling inside when you've lost your soulmate, your lover, your confidant and your best friend.

You can't go out and find a new love when you're still in love with the old one.