C.S. Lewis watched Joy Davidman in her final days, fully aware the clock was running out. He faced the wreckage of her illness without flinching. He stayed present in his own life. He loved her with a ferocity that defied reason, but he never surrendered his identity to the relationship. Then, after she passed, he mourned until he was empty. And yet he remained a man with a path and a mind of his own. He held her in the center of his heart without making her the center of his existence.

I used to think that if I wasn’t losing myself in someone else, I wasn’t "truly" in love. Women sensed the desperation, and the unspoken demand that they completed me. They pulled away. My relationships collapsed under the weight of my need, and I suffered, blaming love itself, never realizing I was the one suffocating it.