A reflection on relationships found and lost on pilgrimage, and the beautiful journey to finding true love
Walking Toward Truth Instead of Escape
Six years ago, on what started as an ordinary June Monday, I had the most spontaneous idea: I would walk the Camino de Santiago as preparation to become a nun. By Wednesday, I was on an airplane, boots packed and heart full of the most peculiar intention. There I was—a young woman so certain of her calling that two days was enough to launch herself toward Santiago, dreaming of becoming a bride of Christ and powered by nothing but pure spontaneity and spiritual conviction.
But how quickly the Camino has a way of revealing our deepest truths!
Within those first precious days on the trail, I discovered something both humbling and liberating: my reasons for seeking religious life were all wrong. I wasn’t running toward God; I was running away from the beautiful responsibility of living my own life fully. I wanted someone else to make my decisions, to fill my days with ready-made meaning. The Camino, in its infinite wisdom, had other plans entirely.
When Hearts Collide on Ancient Paths
Enter the Italian. Even now, I smile remembering how I couldn’t catch his name that first day—how little attention I paid to this man who would soon turn my carefully planned pilgrimage upside down.
We began walking in a group, that lovely collection of souls gathered by an Australian girl who had a gift for bringing lonely pilgrims together. But the Camino calls us each differently, and soon both he and I felt the pull toward solitude and deeper conversation. Just the two of us, walking those long days, our words growing deeper with each passing kilometer.
Oh, the dance we did! Drawing close, then pulling away when the intensity became too much. I remember the sting of becoming “too much” for someone—that particular heartbreak that comes when connection overwhelms before it can properly bloom. For days, I walked alone, sometimes covering 38 kilometers in a desperate attempt to outpace both him and my own feelings.
But the Camino has its own choreography. We kept finding each other on the trail—meeting, separating, meeting again. Until that magical moment when our different paths literally converged, and we bumped into each other from opposite directions. He took it as a sign, and perhaps it was.
Where Bodies Lead Before Hearts Are Ready
By the time we reached the halfway point to Santiago, something had shifted between us. We walked into Santiago de Compostela holding hands, spent that romantic evening in Fisterra watching the sunset paint the world crimson golden. It felt like the perfect ending to a pilgrim’s tale.
But here’s where wisdom whispers what our hearts often ignore: when passion becomes the foundation rather than the crown of connection, even the most beautiful beginnings can crumble. In those tender moments where souls meet bodies, I learned that the physical can sometimes eclipse the possibility of lasting friendship. The intensity that felt so right on the Camino proved fragile in the harsh light of ordinary life.
The Afterward: When Santiago Becomes Memory
He visited me once in Ireland, where I was living then. But somehow, returning to regular life washed away all that Camino magic like rain erasing chalk from stone. Soon I became something like an enemy to him—blocked from his WhatsApp, relegated to the painful position of reaching out only on birthdays, receiving responses that hurt more than silence ever could.
The heartbreak was profound. But here’s what I discovered about broken hearts and faith: they can become the most fertile ground for growth.
Healing Through Gratitude and Grace
My confessor gave me the most unexpected prescription for heartbreak: set aside all other prayers and speak only gratitude for a time. “But Father,” I protested in my dramatic sorrow, “I have nothing to be thankful for!” How wrong I was. Within days, this practice of radical gratitude began lifting my spirits in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
I threw myself into healing with the same intensity I’d once brought to that Camino crush. I changed parishes, joined the Rosary Sisters (twenty women praying for each other’s husbands—or future husbands), returned to running, sang in the choir. I brought my broken heart to confession like a sacred offering and watched God transform it into something stronger.
The Real Love That Waited
By 2020, I was a different woman. I’d done the work—personal development, therapy, deep spiritual reflection. When I decided to start dating again, I knew exactly what I was looking for: not a romance, not a fling, but a husband. Someone with equally serious intentions.
That’s how I met Ken, my Texan, my now-husband. We’re nearly two years into marriage now—we got legally married in Las Vegas in 2023, and on the second anniversary of that joyful Vegas ceremony, we’ll be celebrating our sacramental marriage. How different real love turned out to be! People had always told me “you’ll know when it’s real,” but until you experience it, those words are just pretty sounds in the air.
With Ken, I wasn’t struck by lightning or swept off my feet. Instead, I fell in love while describing him to my mother over the phone, realizing mid-sentence that he was simply, beautifully, a good man. This love has been unshaming, healing, reviving—everything I never knew to pray for but somehow received anyway.
The Truth About Camino Connections
Here’s what six years and a happy marriage have taught me about those intense Camino relationships: they’re real, they’re powerful, and they’re often not what they seem.
On the Camino, we’re stripped down to our essentials. We’re blissfully free from the daily decisions that usually crowd our lives, living simply with what matters most. In this rarified air, hearts react differently. Connections feel more intense because everything else falls away.
I watched this Italian man transform the moment he returned to regular life—family expectations, old patterns, the weight of ordinary concerns washing away all that Camino spirituality and mystery. It was brutal to witness, but deeply instructive.
Keeping Your Heart and Your Values
The Camino crush is real, dear pilgrims, but so is the need for vigilance. Our souls, temporarily freed from life’s burdens, can lead us down paths that wouldn’t serve us well in the long run. I’ve seen people betray existing relationships for these intense but ephemeral connections, and it breaks my heart.
Prayer is powerful—I believe this with every fiber of my being. But prayer without wisdom, without decisive commitment to our deepest values, leaves us vulnerable. It’s not enough to pray for protection; we must also choose it, moment by moment, step by step.
The View from Happily Ever After
Writing this from the perspective of a woman happily married to her best friend, I can laugh gently at that younger self who thought her heart was permanently shattered. That heartbreak, painful as it was, taught me what real love actually looks like. It’s not the lightning strike of instant attraction or the intensity born of extraordinary circumstances.
Real love, I’ve learned, is what remains when the Camino ends and ordinary Tuesday mornings begin. It’s what grows when two people choose each other not just in moments of transcendence, but in the beautiful mundane of shared life.
The Camino gave me a broken heart, yes. But more importantly, it gave me the wisdom to recognize true love when it finally, quietly, gratefully arrived. That spontaneous June decision to walk toward Santiago led me, through heartbreak and healing, prayer and patience, to a love more beautiful than anything my boldest dreams had dared imagine.
Sometimes the longest journeys—the ones that begin with such certainty about the destination—end up taking us exactly where we were meant to be all along. Not to a convent, but to a love that sanctifies ordinary life and makes every day a small pilgrimage of its own.
This reflection comes from six years of perspective, a healed heart, and the joy of finding love that lasts beyond even the most magical of pilgrimages.
