Maybe He Wasn’t Special. Maybe You Just Made Him Special.

Sophia Irvine

1 hour ago

4 min read

I fell in love with a man who was never going to love me back. I fell for all the hidden attributes I thought he possessed, from his humour, all the way to his kindness and sensitivity, something, it would seem, men don’t display that often, and what I thought made him so endearing.

I thought he was the best thing to come into my life, yet it’s astonishing how quickly someone can walk in, and then walk right back out… without having the decency to say a simple “goodbye”.

Perhaps we should backtrack a little bit, and set the scene for this modern day love story. One winter’s night, in late January, I had given up all hope of meeting someone… not even ‘the one’, just anyone.

I had tried the dating apps, I had dipped my toes in joining social clubs, I had pursued my passions and focused on myself, I had even surrendered to the oh-so-common theory of “you’ll find them when you’re not looking”.

So, on that cold Saturday night, I decided to go out with the girls.

Dressed in something seasonally inappropriate for January (probably a little black miniskirt and a lacy satin top), paired with an oversized 90s fur coat, I took to the city for a night of dancing.

Digital cameras flashing, kitten heels clicking against the laminated wooden dancefloor, consuming countless shots of tequila and vodka against the sounds of throwback acid house tracks. I was bouncing off the walls of one of the nightclubs where I’d experienced some of the best nights of my life, when I saw him.

Standing across the dancefloor, looking straight at me, I thought I had found him.

I argue that the term “sparks fly” was coined for this very type of interaction. The kind where the entire room seems to fade away into the distance, and all that can be felt is the electricity alive between the two of you.

Very few words were spoken, yet my heart felt like it was on fire… the rawest form of human interaction; lightning, heat, a blaze that made me wonder if perhaps meeting him would later become one of my biggest regrets. Not because of who he was, but because of how he made me feel, and the comparison that he would later become to every interaction I experienced after him.

Now, fast forward to the present day, and it turns out that he isn’t all that he seemed to be, back on that winter’s night, all those months ago.

It’s funny, really, how quickly our minds fill in the gaps of knowledge that we are presented with, before we have any cold, hard evidence of what is fact and what is merely fiction.

In the pursuit of finding love, we all become a little bit swept away in the “what ifs” and “almost” opportunities. We find ourselves perhaps replaying sweet, blissful moments and musing over what could have been.

In reality, however, particularly the reality of love in this digital age, dating is hard. Online dating is a hurdle we would rather not jump; going out on dates in real life requires genuine effort, and the infamous “talking stage” can become both the birthplace and graveyard of something that’s nearly real.

This led me to question: what is it that we are actually seeking in a partnership? Is it this spark that I felt, many months ago?

Is it maybe the sense of security that we think will arrive when we have someone to lean on, when life presents its inevitable challenges?

Is it, perhaps, the validation that we feel wanted, loved, and appreciated by someone independent of ourselves, when a lot of the time, we rarely feel truly content alone?

In practice, we could start to develop these attributes within ourselves. Not as a means to avoid the heartbreak that accompanies relationships, but to build up a sense of self so resilient that we do not feel completely lost when someone closes the door behind them, on their way out of our lives.

Developing the characteristics that we seek in a partner might just be one of the healthiest ways to truly understand not only ourselves, but what we are searching for in our romantic relationships.

In romance, we are so often seeking an extension of ourselves; our best sides, our funniest jokes, our most comforting embraces, our care-free, spontaneous selves that can so easily become buried amongst the everyday monotony.

Maybe we aren’t looking for just “anyone”, maybe we’re looking for an experience with someone else that brings our “oneness” out of ourselves.

In modern dating, it can become frustratingly easy to question if there is truly someone out there for each of us. With a mind-scrambling abundance of terms from “situationship” and “talking stage” to “ghosting” and the “three-month rule”, it can start to feel a little bit like a minefield… with absolutely no romance.

All of this led me back to where I began, on that winter’s night in January. I had experienced something that felt so electric and so alive that it had completely overridden my logical mind.

In the later stages, however, that spark steadily became a flame that was starting to burn. I had become so invested in a force outside of myself that I had forgotten what it was that I was originally searching for.

That spark lit up a part of me that I was not aware existed. However, in the long run, it turned out that the man who lit that spark was just a stepping stone to some place much greater: back to myself.

For all the time that I spent, lost in trying to figure out what was happening between us, and analysing a situation that did not heed to logic, I completely forgot that perhaps I was just looking for something to remind myself that while it’s a thrilling experience to feel sparks fly, building a fire to keep myself warm would, inevitably, attract the perfect companion to sit beside me.

So, maybe I fell in love with a man who was never going to love me back. Or, perhaps, he was only ever meant to lead me back towards the most important person in my life: myself.