I'm still pondering the "Is Love Enough?" question of my last post.

Specifically: that belief that there is love there, even if the relationship failed. Even if the other stuff — the friendship, the caring, the consideration — isn't. Or isn't anymore.

A lot of us believe that, right? That the love part doesn't just go away? That the fact of our divorces doesn't negate that?

Does my theory that love can't stand alone actually apply?

Or is it all because believing otherwise would invalidate so much? It would nullify choices we made, make them wrong, make them stupid. Without that something real underneath it, we wouldn't have had any reason to stay as long as we did. No reason to try as hard.

I wonder if others clung to that "somehow, this comes from love" idea. I did. I wonder how long others told themselves, knew somehow, that there was love there, despite everything. I wonder how long it took others to realize that wasn't enough.

Through everything — through the years of wondering why I wasn't happier, the wishing for something different, the wondering if things were ever going to change — the question of whether or not Jake loved me never occurred to me. Instead, it came down to the manifestation. It came down to commitment. It came down to, eventually, him saying, "I love you, but I love this job more. And that's what I'm choosing."

I wonder too if, in the end, it matters at all. Does it matter that he loved me? We were still unhappy. I still broke into a thousand pieces. I'm still in the process of putting that back together. Would it, could it, have been any harder than it was?

Do the semantics matter, when it still ends the same way?