Robert Gale Ongley

Month: May 2022

  • FINDING LOVE (PART TWO)

    My post on finding love continues. I reflected on my childhood and adolescence in Part One. Following are segments on my adulthood experience and my projected future with love across its full spectrum.

    Adulthood

    I think now of my first real girlfriend. That was when I was 18 and spending a summer going to school in Washington, D.C. She was staying in the same boarding house as me. We met by spending time in the evenings, sitting with a group of young people on a stoop in front of the building. I was attracted to her. She looked like Anouk Aimee, a French actress in the film A Man and a Woman. I didn’t really know how to express my interest, so I showed how aloof I could be. I would sit while others did the talking, laughing at times, but staring off into the distance as though I didn’t care much about the conversation or the people around me. The ploy worked. The young woman took notice. We started talking and we were engaging wonderfully. It didn’t last more than two weeks, but it was a start for me.

    As it happened, it was a few years before I had another girlfriend. We had a blind date arranged by mutual friends. We weren’t much alike, but we hit it off and a relationship developed. She was two years older than me, had two small children and was a widow due to a terrible auto accident. She wanted to get married, a thought that hadn’t occurred to me. Nevertheless, we were moving in that direction when our differences became too much and she broke up with me. Looking back on it years later, I realized I didn’t actually love her. I was infatuated, but not in love.

    I entered into a new phase of my life following the devastating breakup. I gained confidence and eventually became wiser about my choice of girlfriends. I learned to look for qualities beyond sexual attraction. I considered shared goals and purposes in finding a life partner. I fell in love with two women during the next six years and married the second of the two. I found love.

    Here’s the rub. I’ve never fully overcome my inability to love with all my heart. To be sure, I have had my moments with my wife and my children and others and the Entity that shall remain nameless. More often, though, I’ve been aloof without harboring any conscious negative feelings. It’s uncomfortable for me to say “I love you.” My wife has trained me to be totally fine with hugs, but I tend to default to non-expressed love. It may be all my own shortcomings, but I suspect it’s connected to my upbringing.

    Where I’m Headed

    I’m working to improve myself in this area, using two tools currently. First, I’m using meditation and contemplative prayer to tap into the reservoir of love within. I believe doing so will enable me to pass this love on to the people in my life in the form that is appreciated according to the needs of each.

    Secondly, I have reviewed the “5 Languages of Love” as written by Gary Chapman. I’m reminded they are demonstrated by acts of service, gift giving, quality time, words of affirmation and appropriate physical touch.

    What I’ve found is that I need to learn to be naturally free and easy in the give and take of the love that’s part of the core of my being. Hopefully, I can unlock it and throw away the key.

  • FINDING LOVE (PART ONE)

    Living in a world without love would likely be a heartbreaking experience unless you didn’t know what love even is. You wouldn’t know what you were missing if it simply wasn’t part of reality in a given universe. Or how about living in an environment where the language of love is different from the norms of general society?

    My Childhood

    Here are some snapshots of how I remember it. Our family was the usual for our time and location. There was a mother and a father. There were four of us kids and another came along after my sister had grown up and was pregnant with her first child. Dad was an employed mechanic and Mom was a housewife most of the time. The grandparents were around until we moved to another state. There were lots of gatherings and Sunday dinners. Meals were served at a table and almost always included meat and potatoes.

    Dad was a hard worker and came home in clothes covered with grease and grime. Mom kept a good house and was the disciplinarian of the family. Dad was quiet usually. Mom was loud, direct and sarcastic. They both liked having fun, which meant they spent weekends going out to bars and night clubs in those early years of my life. I don’t remember them going to school functions. Their lack of interest in our personal lives meant we were given a long leash. We had a “live and let live” operation by the time I was 10.

    We didn’t verbalize or physically demonstrate our love for each other. Probably due to our mother and her side of the family, there was an element of jocularity in our home. My brothers generated much of it and I think I eventually learned how to contribute some of my own humor. From my perspective, my parents’ sparse teaching was through example. Their love was unspoken, but present in deed. They were solidly together. Though we moved a lot, we had a roof over our heads and food on the table.

    None of that really mattered to my immature mind. I was content with things as they were. I did start to awaken to the intriguing possibilities of romantic love by the age of six. I don’t remember much about my feelings and thoughts from that time, but I do recall an incident in 1st Grade I’d like to relate. It was recess and I was in the school yard with other students. I was hanging out with a girl named Candy. Somehow, it became general knowledge that she was my girlfriend. Some of the students were making fun of me about it. They were taunting me mercilessly. I was anything but a violent boy, but I became enraged and started lashing out. I took off my winter hat that had a buckle on the chin strap and I swung it around viciously, hoping to hit somebody with it. I guess I wanted to get back at anyone who said I had a girlfriend. Coincidentally, a couple of years later, I remember knowing this other girl named Candy in our next neighborhood who was supposedly my girlfriend. I was standing with my mother at her family’s front door when this “relationship” was referenced in a mildly amused way between the adults.

    I had my first crush on a girl in 6th Grade, I think. Those feelings were a mixture of excitement and bashfulness. I started learning how to be aloof to protect myself. I wouldn’t consider letting her know I “liked” her. I worshipped her from afar, across a classroom.

    Adolescence

    In 8th Grade, we had just moved to a new town. I was just getting to know students and to be known by them. At a school event, I was walking through the hall when a girl flirtatiously said, “Hi Paul” to me. She mistook me for a classmate of mine who I resembled. I think she did that again soon after. That made me take cover behind more misplaced antagonism. I rudely pointed out to her, “I’m not Paul!” That put an end to this nonsense. She backed off and never flirted with me again. Then I began seeing how pretty she was and I developed a long-term crush on her that I could never bring myself to reveal. We eventually became friends, but I could not tell her how I felt about her.

    Not much changed through junior high and high school. I became moderately popular and a bit of a class clown. I learned to dance and singled out girls I would dance with, but I didn’t have the confidence to talk with them despite dancing with them many times. I did ask a couple of girls out, but was rejected and stopped asking. I was fixed up for my two prom dates. The second one was a great girl and we shared an exciting affection, but I didn’t continue to go out with her, for no logical reason.

    At home, my younger brother by nine years and I became the only two left at home. My mother started working. I was given a puppy at about the age of 13. That made me very happy. I adored him. Unfortunately, he was chained to a dog house outside and I did nothing for him except feed him. I even forgot to do that duty once in a while. He was an obvious choice for my dormant love, but I wasn’t interested in him anymore. Because my parents left me babysitting my brother while they went out sometimes, we grew close in some ways, but I was given to treating him cruelly at times. I would scare him with pranks and stories that could plant fears in his impressionable mind. It’s good to know all these years later that he doesn’t recall those incidents.

    Mostly, I liked people. I poked fun too much, but I wasn’t mean-spirited. I wanted to make people laugh and be liked back because of my sense of humor. I didn’t find love in my adolescence, except in the form of friendship. It was great, but not enough.

    Part Two of this post is available and comes next in the Blog menu. It covers my adult life on the subject of finding love.