About (Un)Successful Loves
2/14/2026
In the morning, after waking up, I was trying to squeeze a pimple when he called. That day we were supposed to buy tickets to Morocco. Instead of a ticket, for the upcoming Valentine’s Day he gave me freedom — the kind I no longer wanted.
“I don’t love you anymore, you’re too far away, it won’t work,” he mumbled while I watched my stubborn, unsqueezable pimple in the mirror. I’ve never really known how to deal with them properly. I didn’t learn in adolescence, so I’m still struggling to this day.
The twelfth relationship — that’s how many answers I’ve collected in my short life about why love fails. Twelve times I heard the words “I love you” from different people, and twelve times I believed them. And just as many times I heard — or had to say — “but…”
When my mom heard that this time it “didn’t work out” again, she just laughed. When she heard the reasons why, she laughed even more. When my dad fell in love with her (my mom is Latvian, my dad Lithuanian), he traveled every weekend by train, by bus, by car.
“When I was transferred to work in a distant village, I thought that was it — we wouldn’t see each other anymore.”
And he still kept coming. He would get off the train at night, in the middle of forests, and without any Google Maps would somehow find the corner where my mom had settled. Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t been born from a love story like that, it would be easier to live. More often, though, I think that because of them I still believe that maybe such happiness will smile on me too — and that in the next relationship I won’t have to say or hear “but…”
(One of the men I loved, after hearing this story, said that back then fuel was cheaper. So it was kind of clear that one wouldn’t work out.)
“We’re both heartless losers,” my friend laughs as I show him the Barcelona sky at dusk.
“Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you,” I reply, reminding him that once he was one of those twelve loves — and that when we had to say “but…” it was harder than it is today to laugh remembering it all. And while our conversation keeps getting interrupted by new calls, I still start to tear up.
The phone doesn’t stop ringing — mornings or evenings — and they, as if on schedule, check whether I’m not sad. And once again I realize how lucky I am.
When I was fifteen and walking through the city streets crying for the first time, she opened her door and brewed me chamomile tea. Not yet properly knowing how to smoke, we pulled one cigarette after another in her parents’ kitchen. Because that’s what friends do. That time she promised me it would never hurt as much as it does the first time. Today we nod at each other — it’s true, it has never hurt that much again.
When five years later I stood crying at a crosswalk, another one of my beloveds ran across the street even though the light was red, pulling a bottle from her pocket and handing it to me. Later, when the bottle was nearly empty, she watched and didn’t stop me from tearing up his clothes and the paintings he had promised to pick up in a few days.
“It won’t be like that anymore,” she laughs.
I laugh too. It won’t.
Every relationship changes you. I’ve changed twelve times already. Still, I never found some of the answers. When should you say you love someone? I tried after a week and after a year — it didn’t work. Should you have more similarities or more differences? I loved an actor, a race car driver, and a yoga instructor — no answer there either. Older or younger? I died of love for someone five years younger and someone fifteen years older. I don’t know.
But one rule has crystallized.
There is no more painful breakup than breaking up with a friend. That’s why, without even realizing it, we almost never truly part from them. We argue, we stop talking, we gossip about each other — but we don’t break up. You don’t want to belong to one another. You only want to be — beside each other.
“And let the best in you belong to your friend. If he must know of your ebb, let him know your flood also.” (K. Gibran)
Sometimes misunderstandings happen and you fall in love with each other. But that “but…” usually ends with a request to stay. Not the one you kiss — the one you call at night. So if you were friends, I believe you can remain so. I’ve managed to do it a few times out of those twelve. Somewhere, I didn’t go wrong — I think today, listening to all my cupids.
“God created women beautiful and men strong, so they could walk them home,” an old man once told me in Georgia.
I wish for all of us to find someone to walk us home — or someone we can walk home. It doesn’t matter if it’s far. It doesn’t matter if home is actually on the other side.
One day, it will work out.
I promise.
This is for all of you — loving and loved.
Say what you do and do what you say.
2024.02.14