Is more than 3 loves too much to ask for?

These last two months I've had more, than any other period in my life, time to spend by myself. Hey, after sending out job applications and project submissions, roaming the net and scrolling through Facebook and YouTube, I am still left with way too much alone time.

With nothing much else to do I end up spending much of this down time roaming through the file boxes in my mind, playing the time traveller, as I relive the past, remembering what I've done, what I shouldn't have done, and with my accumulated fifty-four years of experience, realizing what I should have done.

Piercing these veils and once again experiencing the life I've lived I can now identify the three times that I've been in love, and here I mean really in love not infatuation and not lust which, face it, are important motivators to all of us as we grow up.

This is not to say I do not recognize the importance, to me at least, of my first real girlfriend, or the first girl I kissed or the first girl I slept with, these three, as well as many other encounters, will always have a place in my heart and mind.

No, what I'm talking about here are the three times I was bowled over both heart and soul by a woman in my life. And unfortunately my life is not a Hallmark movie, so the boy does not always get the girl in the end; in fact I ended up with none.

The first girl I fell for started out as a friend of a friend, but as I grew to know her during the time we spent together I recognized that she was someone who I could share the rest of my life with, the only problem, which ended up being insurmountable, was that she never felt that way about me.

I realized this early in our friendship but being the insufferable romantic that I was, ignored all the continuing signs, and as they say, hope blooms eternal in the young (yes I was young at the time) romantic soul, I ended up spending a long time (years in fact) as a friend, hoping that she, as if we were in a Harlequin romance, would one day wake up and really see me. Alas this was not to happen and I had to finally come to terms with this on the day she got married.

The second love of my life was a co-worker, a wonderful, intelligent and beautiful woman, who was sexy with an individuality that made her even sexier, as if that was even possible. And she was sophisticated but with a down to earth attitude when dealing with people.

I completely messed this relationship up by betraying her. Worst, is that I really think I had an opportunity with her because, unlike my first love, I think that this amazing woman was really starting to fall in love with me. H ’mm…I may be wrong here, since I am no longer in contact with her and have never spoken to her about this but my ego would like me to think that this was so.

This is one of my “I should not have done” life events. The ignobly fact is that I unrealistically thought I might have had a chance, one of many I tried to convince myself of,  with my first love, so I dishonoured the growing relationship with this fantastic woman by bringing it to a complete end without any regard for what she had invested into our relationship.

To say she ended up hating me is an understatement, and I feel that she is completely justified in her hate. To this day breaking up with her, both how and why I did it, even after fifty-four years of making mistakes, is still the one thing that I have done that I feel most ashamed about, ever.

My third and final love is of course my ex-wife. I won’t go into the details of our break-up (since I've already chronicled them) other than to say that it ended in my being betrayed, not by the actual breakup, which I can rationalize as two people growing apart as their life experiences changes them, for the better or worse, who can say, but betrayal by my ex’s actions after asking for a divorce.

Maybe this is my karma coming back to haunt me for my betrayal with my second love, who knows, who can tell?

Recently, one of my ex-sister-in-laws told me that I am still an intelligent and handsome man and that I can still find someone to spend the rest of my life with. Is this so, can anyone really expect more than three real loves in any one life?

And is my sister-in-law telling the truth, I mean, at fifty-four, I am over-weight (obese by medical definitions), with jowly cheeks, more than one chin and man boobs that many a woman would be proud of. Not to mention the dappled grey hair on my head, face and chest. At least the hair on my back hasn't gone grey as yet, or at least I hope so since I cannot see it and none of my friends have said so, and yes I have hair on my back a lot of it. So am I really a catch?

We all have self-images of who we are and what we look like, and most of us hold these images of ourselves from when we were at our best, which tends to be sometime in our twenties. So too do couples, they keep that idyllic image of themselves when they got married or where dating, and these are the images they see whenever a wife or husband looks at their spouse, regardless of the extra weight or additional wrinkles.

Do women really look for the middle aged, over-weight, out-of-condition, greying man? For an answer guess how many more women drool over George Clooney as they do over Paul Giamatti?

Truth be told, these days, when my friends indicate that a good looking young woman is eyeing me, my first thought is that she has daddy issues.

This is not to say that infatuation and lust are totally counted out, they played a big part in many relationships I had when I was younger and maybe they will once again, at least I can hope, but a true love again…maybe that’s stretching luck a bit too far.