Destination James

Read somewhere that the thing you love about your partner is usually the thing you struggle with. Couldn’t stop thinking about it because it is very true.

I wrote this piece in April to setup a path to talk about my husband, James.

Love life seems to me like a long train ride - you get off a station, meet someone, have your heart break, get back onto the train, then wait to arrive at another station. Between meeting someone new can take days, months and years. For me, from previous relationship to James took about 6-8 years. I didn’t have the desire to get off at any station, just wanted to be alone for as long as I could.

Since high school, I was jumping from one relationship to another, always looking for someone to love me. “Loving myself” was a foreign concept. A friend once said to me, “You only like the beginning stage of a relationship.” Yes, the honeymoon stage when the guy showered me with attention was my favorite part, then hated it when he returned to hanging out with friends. One of my ex-boyfriends called me Koala Bear because I was clingy.

Being Chinese, I didn’t grow up getting warm and fuzzy feelings from my parents. There wasn’t any “I love you” or “We’re proud of you.” The first two years of my life, which said to be an important time when one receives and learns unconditional love, was spent in a 24-hour daycare. My parents were both working and I was only home during the weekends. Not receiving enough love, didn’t know how to give myself love, and saw giving as a way to trade for love, I was always chasing after someone. With being conditioned to be abandoned, I was also chasing after guys that were “bad.”

I dated all the bad guys - one who forced me into sex, one who cheated several times, one who went to jail, one who stopped seeing his daughter because he needed to date again (“No one wants a single dad,” he said). Took many heartbreaks to realize it was better for me to stay single forever. A friend said to me, “Maybe it’s time to reconnect with yourself.” I didn’t fully understand what she meant at the time, but it became a motivation to get to know myself.

Read all the self help books, read Rumi’s work, trained myself to do things alone, meditated to hear my own voice… Stayed single for many years and I enjoyed it. I could eat at a restaurant or watch a movie by myself without thinking, “Poor me, I’m all alone.” Friends were worried, “You need a man in your life, someone to take care of you.” What? I didn’t need anyone to take care of me, nothing was missing in life.

A year before meeting James I was experiencing a lot of human relationship problems. It was as if being tested for all the things I learned from the past years. At the time I thought, “Someone amazing must be coming into my life, otherwise I wouldn’t be tested like this.” I welcomed the challenges, solved them with as much love as I could give, and learned from them. One of the biggest things I learned is don’t chase, but become the person to meet the future.

One afternoon during lunch, a good friend showed me her OkCupid profile and the men she was meeting. I got curious, not about meeting people, but about the social media and algorithm aspect of it. I’m such a geek when it comes to the tech side of social media. That evening I joined the app, put up a profile and scrolled through others’ profiles. For the next few days, I studied what people wrote in their profiles, studied how the algorithm work, kept refining my profile. Very soon, I was getting messages from men - some were nice and most were creepy. And then there was this one person, James Martin, he swiped “yes” to my profile, but didn’t immediately message me. I looked through his profile. “He’s cute, nice smile,” I thought. His pictures showed him as very athletic - running, hiking, hiking on a snowy mountain… “Yikes, no.” I’m the least outdoor person. But I liked what he wrote about himself and that smile. So I swiped “yes.” He didn’t message me until few days later.

The day when we finally met, we had already exchanged many messages on the app. I appreciated that he wasn’t rushing to meet. Still, I was really nervous. Arrived early, got myself comfortable with the environment, then suited up as a confident woman (something I evolved to do after becoming a photographer and meeting people a lot) - the things that I could control gave some comfort. When James arrived, instantly there was this warmth between us (mostly warmth oozing out of him). We talked for an hour, about life, about our past, about anything. If we had more time we would’ve talked for many more hours.

It was challenging at first to date someone again; on top of that, an extrovert. I was never with someone as warm as him, as honest, as kind, as considerate. I, subconsciously, kept trying to sabotage our happiness, trying to get him to abandon me, trying to push him away. But who he is inspired me to work on myself, to dig deeper into the root of what made me into who I am, so I can stop pushing love away. Who he is reflects what I lack. For example, he is able to be happy for someone’s success. An actor getting a new show and he would say, “Good for him, I’m so happy for him.” I don’t have that in me, I don’t even cheer for myself when I get a big job. I am learning, learning to love and to let love in.

Today, we celebrate our 5 years wedding anniversary.

James is someone I didn’t think I could fall in love with. He has the biggest heart, he lives life fully, he talks and laughs with full strength, very outgoing, loves people… There’s so much “space” in him that he can have so many people in his life. He’s always happy for others’ achievements. I am very opposite of him. I’m guarded, nothing excites me, don’t want people near me. We had our ups and downs because of our differences, but communication always takes us back to love. For someone as broken as me, I know it takes work to be with me, but he doesn’t give up. He is always cheering me on, listening to me, sitting with me.

All the experiences and heartbreaks in the past took me here today. I know I am not getting back onto the train, there’s too much to discover and to love at destination James. Truly grateful to have him as my life partner and to raise our girls together.

I love you, James.