What if there isn’t such a thing as the love of your life?

Dear Universe,

What if there isn’t such a thing as the love of your life?

Back in the aftermath of my ex-husband’s affair, I asked him if the new woman was the love of his life, to which he answered (probably more out of frustration with my enraged interrogation than anything) that, yes, indeed he thought she was.

Which obviously was like a dagger to the chest at the time. How in the fuck could our decade of relationship producing two beautiful children not be the love of his life but a few months of a hidden affair could be?

I didn’t understand it then. Maybe I still don’t.

But my struggle now isn’t so much with his response (the scar on that one has healed nicely). It’s with the entire concept of a “love of your life.”

What bullshit.

There was love in that relationship at some point. Real love. That doesn’t disappear because we grew apart and the ending sucked.

But love of my life? I don’t fucking know. I haven’t lived my whole life yet!

If I concluded that he was the love of my life right now, would that mean every love that comes after would somehow be doomed to be lesser? That the love with my next partner would never be able to compete? In which case… why fucking bother?

That seems pretty silly to conclude at this point. Or at all.

Because am I going to be lying on my deathbed someday ranking the relationships in my life? Giving them a score, one through 10, for how long they lasted, how intense they were, who was there for the milestones, etc.?

I seriously don’t think that’s how you meant for this to work, Universe.

I think maybe we are meant to experience different kinds of love with different people at different points in our life. And different doesn’t mean better or worse – just… different.

Maybe some love challenges us. Some keeps us comfortable. Some is intense. Some is easy. Some lasts. Some doesn’t. You get the picture.

And maybe I don’t need to decide which one mattered most. Maybe they can each just be part of the story – a story that can still be grand and beautiful even if it doesn’t end with one Love of My Life living happily ever after under a sunset or whatever.

I think we’ve been sold that fairytale pretty hard. So hard that we’ve made it the standard, albeit an unrealistic one that requires turning love into some kind of stupid competition.

Anyway… fuck it, Universe.

I know all of this probably sounds like a very convenient-for-single-Bailee theory. It probably is.

But I hope that there is more love to come in my future. And when it arrives, I don’t plan to go into it with the expectation that it has to be anything. Beat anything.

The life part is what we only get one of.

And I want mine to be filled with love. Lots and lots of love.

XO – Bailee

October 6, 2026