I would like to share with you a story that will possibly help you if, like I lost love, you too lost the love of your life. When it happened to me, oh my gosh, I felt as if the world was collapsing all around me. Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" and I tend to think about this when my thoughts turn to how I lost love.

I feel that I it is important for us to realize that every relationship has a normal natural life. For instance, in grade school it lasted until the next day and in middle school, all of 3 days. This natural lifespan does tend to increase as we get older. However, some relationships go along a-okay for a time, and then they tend to get somewhat off-center. In our lifetime, most of us will only have truly one love of your life. The rest of them? They come to an end. This is why when I say I lost love, I am referring to the natural process.

In my story, my boyfriend and I were debating about taking our relationship to the next level. He had lost his job and wanted to move into my house. It certainly made sense from the financial aspect - we were spending all of our time there anyway.

I quickly realized that there is something wrong here - to me there is something noteworthy about having independent homes. I was unable to go to this next level and therefore I lost love. Because I was not willing to make this commitment, the time line of our relationship ended.

Yes it is true - I didn't handle the situation very well. I went out with the girls and well; things got a little out of control. Word got back to my boyfriend, he was understandably upset, to say the least, and he broke up with me. I lost love over the actions I chose on one evening.

Thinking back on the events of that evening, I was really reacting to our talk about moving in together. I know that I would not have acted the way I did if I really wanted us to live together. I lost love because I was not ready for the route our relationship was headed.

Don't get me wrong - I am grateful for the time we had and for the chance to be in a relationship. I just was not ready - he was not my soul mate, the love of my life. Instead, I came to know that he was someone I truly enjoyed hanging out with. I loved him, and I still love him - but I am not in love with him. He is not the man I visualize spending the rest of my life with.

After the break up I tried to evaluate what went wrong and actually went through some rough times. I was hurt when he told me it was over and wanted to end our relationship, and I knew that I had hurt him terribly. I just did not want him out of my life forever.

What I really wanted was for things to carry on just like they were. However, there two choices to make when you are in a relationship - it either has to grow or it dies. And because I was not agreeable to the idea of growth, it had to die. There is a time in every relationship to die, and as far as I was concerned, this was mine. That is how I lost love.