May 31, 2025

In the past few months, I’ve entered a new emotional space—one I don’t always have the tools to navigate.

I used to believe I’d one day find the kind of love and friendship my parents had with each other. But lately, that hope has shifted.

Now, I find myself wishing for the kind of love and friendship my son has with his wife.

We were both on Hinge at the same time.

A few weeks in, he met his now-wife. It was instant. It made sense. From the beginning, they just fit.

Meanwhile, I’m on my fourth—or maybe fifth—dating app, and I haven’t even met a man who could manage a second date, let alone imagine a future with me.

This isn’t jealousy.

It’s not even comparison.

It’s awe. It’s joy. It’s the deepest kind of pride for the bleeding-hearted boy I raised—the one who spent his childhood struggling to find friends who truly saw him.

Not only did he find a friend.

He found a soulmate.

And I love that for him.

His relationship reminds me of the love I grew up watching—my father loving and protecting my mother and all of us.

And now, I’ve raised a man who does the same for his wife.

That is a legacy I’m proud of.

But here’s what’s hard:

Those kind of men—men who stay, men who protect, men who show up—don’t seem to come into my life.

Or if they do, they don’t stay.

Something about me seems to draw in men who vanish just as quickly as they appear.

Is it me?

Is it them?

I truly don’t know anymore.

What I do know is this new chapter has brought a strange ache with it.

Sitting in the audience at my son’s wedding, hearing them exchange vows… I was filled with pride and peace.

But sitting there beside the man I married at 23—a man I should never have trusted with my heart—reminded me of the contrast.

My son is nothing like the man who raised him.

And that is a miracle.

But it’s also a painful kind of vindication.

I’m so grateful for the home my parents built.

I’m so proud of the home my son is building.

But lately, I’m more aware of the emptiness in my own.

After 27 years of giving, surviving, and healing, I wonder:

Will anyone ever choose me the way I’ve taught others to love?

Will anyone protect me the way I raised a son to protect his wife?

This isn’t the end of the story.

But it’s a pause in the middle.

A moment where pride and pain, joy and sorrow, coexist in the same breath.