Someone else, earlier, posted exactly how we tend to define “heart horse”. It’s not something that is definable, and it’s something that is easily recognized by people around you. It’s just a term to describe a very close bond that is just different from others. It’s the “barn is burning, you can only save one, who is the one you save” and it’s the FIRST reaction, not the logical reaction, not the “smart choice” … it’s the one that you know would devastate you more than others if they passed. That doesn’t mean you don’t care for/love your other horses/whatever. It just means something really special happened. I used to refer to the one main horse as my “soulmate in horse form” … and no, I don’t believe in only ONE soulmate. I still hope to find that same connection with another horse. But there were a lot of things that made it happen - his intelligence and personality, the things he had gone through, the things I have gone through, finding each other at the right time, etc. It was a trust/partnership thing - and something that was very, very obvious even to the most cynical of people around us. Heck, even an old-school “horses don’t have feelings” cowboy type sat and watched “Heart Horse” one day, as he stood tied as I worked with other horses, and said “I don’t believe horses can be jealous, but I swear that one is jealous of what you are doing.”
Some men get it too, maybe not the term, but the meaning behind it. My farrier, a male, has assured me that if I just open myself back up to that deep of a relationship, one of my current horses is ready to step into that place. My “heart horse” has been gone 2 years … but it’s still tough to open up that much again. Yes, I was devastated and a wreck when he died. It derailed me for a very long time. I still struggle with getting teary eyed when I talk about him. I’ve lost other animals and pets, and work with a LOT of horses, and I tend to be pretty rational and good about their losses. Pirate knocked me on my rear for a very, very long time.
I lost my husband when I was 29. Now, 11 years later, he’s been gone longer than we were together. BUT I still miss him and get teary every now and then. I’m in the camp above - I’ve dated, thought about remarrying, and will not rule it out, but I just haven’t yet found what I had with him. Doesn’t mean I haven’t loved some of the guys I’ve dated in the past 11 years. It’s just NOT the same, and to me I just try and remind myself how lucky I was to find that kind of a love/connection and to have happiness, rather than dwell in what I’m missing.
Even saying that - just because someone else’s “love” isn’t the same, doesn’t mean it is wrong. I tend to agree though - if the term bugs you it’s probably a personal reason. Maybe you haven’t experienced the connection, maybe you aren’t open to it, maybe you have and feel stupid about it because we should be more rational, who knows. But when words bother us it’s usually more about us than the people saying the words. I know, for example, I HATE seeing “DH” as well. But that’s because I was first exposed to it while going through a very, very nasty breakup with a guy that I was about to marry. I couldn’t read it without thinking “damn husband” and being very, very cynical about love in general and doubting that people truly LIKED their significant others, much less thought of them as “dear”. It made my skin literally crawl and I wanted to scream at people who used it about how fake they were. But THEY weren’t the problem. I was.
