Someone once told me that I would fall in love with three types of people in my life. My initial reaction was doubt. How could I love three separate people? How could you fall in love more than once? The first time you fall in love is the one and only, right? I couldn’t fully understand this concept until I actually went through each different “type” of love. This happens at different paces for each person. We find these people in high school, college, even 20-30 years down the road.

We fall in love with three people in our lifetime:

The first love: This love often happens at a young age. For me, this was the 8th grade, first crush kind of love... The love that took me through (what I thought was) the ups and downs of normal relationships. We fought over cigarettes and being late for school. This love made me always paranoid that someone was lurking around the corner to ruin us. The two of you eventually grow apart or call it quits for silly reasons. This type of love ended when I thought the distance wasn’t worth it. When I went to college and experienced new things and realized that this person wasn’t what I wanted my forever to be. This love let me take a good, hard, look at myself and helped me realize what I wanted in life. When we get older, we may look back and think it wasn’t love or that this was “puppy love.” But, the truth is, it was. It was love for what we knew love to be.

While this person might be reading this article right now, this relationship didn’t make me hate you, this relationship showed me that I needed someone who better understood me, who really, truly knew how to put up with me. Unfortunately, that next person wasn’t right for me either…

The second love: The hard one. We get hurt in this one. This love makes us feel as though we’re at the bottom, the worst feeling once this love continues. This love drives us to do the crazy things we thought to be spontaneous love. This love teaches us lessons and makes us stronger. This love includes great pain, lies, betrayal, abuse, drama, and damage. For me, it was abuse. This love drove me to become the version of me that I hated, I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. Often times, I would wonder if what went on in this relationship was actually normal. While others definitely told me that it wasn’t, I didn’t believe it. The second love often has us brainwashed to believe something that a logical human being wouldn’t. We figure that the only person we need is this person, we trick ourselves into believing that this is what true love actually is. This love tricked me into believing that the jealous fights and rage were common, everyday relationship things. I almost settled. I was so close to actually spending the rest of my life with this person, and I am so glad that I didn’t.

This relationship took so much from me, sent me spiraling into my lowest point imaginable. This man took more than love from me, he took away what little self-confidence I had left. This relationship made me feel like the smallest person in the room. He took away my righteousness, my opinion and my strive to make myself better. All I wanted was for him to be happy. This relationship broke me, shattered me into a million, tiny pieces that I thought I would never be able to put back together. I allowed this man to take so much away from me, things I never thought I would ever get back. What I didn’t know is that I would finally be able to start over, build the greatest “me” imaginable, and I would eventually, finally, be happy.

While this love is the most painful thing we will ever experience. This is the one where we grow. We realize what we love about love and what we don’t love about love. What we actually deserve, and our eyes are open to what we cannot ignore. Now we know the difference between good and bad humans. Now we become closed, careful, cautious and considerate. This love makes us feel as though we can never love again…but we do.

We now know exactly what we want and won’t settle for, which prepared me for you…

The third love: This one comes blindly. No warning. Just creeps up on us silently. For me, this love bumped into me at a concert that I almost didn’t make it to. You don’t go looking for this love, it finds you. While I tried not to love you, I couldn’t help it. We can put up any wall we want, it will be broke down. We’ll find ourselves caring about them without trying. There were times that I wanted to back off, and just move on. Something kept me interested, and I could never figure out what that was. They look nothing like our usual “type”, but we get lost in their eyes daily. We see beauty in their imperfections. We hide nothing from them. You understand me, you truly have patience when I cannot, you know how to love me when I cannot love myself.

This love taught me how to love again, you worked with me from the very beginning. This love was a patient kind of love, a love that I never thought was possible. This kind of person is meant to be found after our second love, they bring you happiness in the littlest things. It retrains our mind, we build ourselves back up from the shattered glass on the floor, to a beautiful stained glass mural. All the different colored bits and pieces, shining beautifully together. This love makes us feel as though good things might be able to happen to us. After all of the hardship that we’ve been put through, this love makes it worth it. We learn beautiful things from this relationship, and finally realize what it means to be in a healthy, happy relationship. This love makes us realize that we want a future with them, whether that be marriage, a family, a pet, anything.

They truly inspire you to become the best “you” that you can possibly be.

You thank the universe for them.

You truly love them.