Two Down, One to Go
I came across the idea recently that we fall in love three times in our lives.
The first love teaches us what we think love is supposed to be.
The second teaches us what love actually feels like.
And the third arrives when we finally understand the difference.
I don’t know if life is quite that neat.
Human beings rarely are.
But I do know this:
I have loved twice in ways that changed me forever.
For me, the first love was never just about romance.
It was about truth.
Before him, I had mastered the art of almost.
Almost dating.
Almost opening up.
Almost letting myself be known.
I would meet men, go on a few dates, maybe even begin to care about them, and then suddenly find reasons to leave before anything became real.
Distance.
Timing.
Work.
Compatibility.
Excuses were easier than honesty.
Because continuing the relationship meant eventually speaking the thing I was still terrified to say out loud:
I am gay.
And for a long time, fear won.
Then one New Year’s, I made myself a promise:
If I met someone I genuinely cared about, I would finally tell the truth about who I was.
Three months later, I met him.
And whether he realizes it or not, he changed my life forever.
Not because we stayed together forever.
Not because it was perfect.
But because loving him finally became more important than hiding myself.
He was the first person who made me brave enough to stop building exits before anyone could truly enter.
That first love taught me that love was not just about being chosen by someone else.
It was also about choosing to stop abandoning myself.
Then came the second love.
The one that cracked me open.
The one that was beautiful and devastating in equal measure.
The one I defended long after it stopped being healthy.
The one that forced me to confront uncomfortable truths:
how much I abandoned myself,
how desperately I wanted to be chosen,
how easily love can become entangled with pain, control, chaos, and survival.
That relationship changed me in ways I am still uncovering.
Not because suffering is romantic.
Not because unhealthy love should be glorified.
But because sometimes collapse becomes the first honest thing that happens to us.
It pulled me away from myself.
But strangely enough,
it also led me back home.
Back to my family.
Back to reflection.
Back to sobriety.
Back to writing.
Back to learning who Isaac is when he is not trying to earn love by disappearing into someone else.
And that is the difficult truth I wrestle with now:
How do you hold gratitude for someone who hurt you?
How do you acknowledge that a relationship damaged you while also admitting it transformed you?
For a long time, I thought healing meant simplifying the story into villain and victim. Good and bad. Right and wrong.
But healing has been far messier than that.
Sometimes the people who break us are also the people who unknowingly force us to rebuild.
Not because what they did was okay.
Not because the pain was necessary.
But because eventually we stop surviving the story and begin learning from it.
So maybe that second love was never meant to last forever.
Maybe it was meant to reveal the places in me that still needed healing.
Maybe it was meant to teach me the difference between being loved and being consumed.
And maybe the third love—the one this theory talks about—isn’t simply another person.
Maybe before it can ever become someone else, it has to become ourselves first.
Maybe the third love is learning how to stay.
To stay honest.
To stay grounded.
To stay present.
To stop abandoning ourselves for the sake of connection.
Two down, one to go.
And for the first time in my life,
that no longer feels tragic.
It feels hopeful.
Reflection
Have you ever had a relationship that changed the way you understood both love and yourself? What did it reveal that you could not see before?
Begin Where You Are
Some relationships arrive to awaken us. Others arrive to unravel us. Healing begins when we stop asking why they happened and start noticing who we became because we survived them.
