about love.
Here’s the whole story: I don’t get love.
I mean, I get lots of love from lovely, lovely people.
But I don’t understand how it works, how you find it, how you keep it, what makes you patient and engrossed with another person for a whole lifetime because of it, and how you overcome all the things you need to overcome to keep it in your heart and in your life forever.
I have dozens of great examples around me, mind you.
My parents are still married after a gazillion years, and I can honestly say they don’t stick with it for the financial benefits or out of habit. I’m lucky to watch them do their thing.
I have many friends who are happily married, too… however that looks for them.
Which could be a clue: it looks different for everyone.
Still, as with assembling IKEA furniture, watching it happen for years and years has brought me no closer to fathoming how it happens.
I don’t buy any of the old saws:
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Love shows up when you least expect it.
Love shows up when you’re not looking for it.
Love is just a matter of finding that one person.
Love is a matter of putting yourself out there.
If love shows up when you least expect it, then a whole lot of people should be experiencing the romantic equivalent of Ed McMahon showing up on their doorstep pretty damn soon. Because they haven’t expected it in a while.
If love shows up when you’re not looking for it, well…. again… a lot of people should be getting startled by true love while showering or clipping their toenails or eating a large bag of chips and watching a stupid movie on TBS.
If love is a matter of finding that one person, we should really be rebounding off all the wrong people like reverse magnets, instead of living with them for years on end until everything melts down, and then spending another few years wondering what the hell we were doing in the first place.
If love is a matter of putting yourself out there, club kids and cougars would fall in love every day.
Then again, maybe they do.
Maybe it’s not that I don’t get love… I just don’t get how I love, or how love is going to look for me when I finally stumble onto it for real. So far, love has felt like a lot of making up for something I lack, or wondering what the other person was thinking, or trying to be everything for someone who didn’t really seem to need half of what I was, or feeling badly that they didn’t have this other person they’d wanted more. And then it felt like nothing.
That sounds bitter. I’m not sure it is, though. Just honest.
I know the things I lack, the stuff I don’t bring to the table. I am not the smartest, the prettiest, the thinnest, the funniest, the wisest, the most peaceful, the least conflicted, the healthiest, the most interesting. I don’t know who is, but it’s not me. And on a lot of levels, I have to be okay with that, because you can’t conjure qualities you don’t have out of thin air. All you can do is try.
But that’s so far from anything I imagine love is about.
Love isn’t about a matching system or a list of compatibilities. Half the couples I see walking around look as though they were randomly selected from a bowlful of people and attached at the hand. I’m sure they love one another, because you can see it, but there’s no obvious outward qualities that really make them make sense.
Which I love.
And which is also why I loathe eHarmony and resume dating and a good portion of the questions people ask one another when they first meet, because I could give you a list of things about me that would impress you, and I could make my life sound great, and I could tell you all the things I wanted in someone else and maybe you would go, “Awesome! Me too!”
Would we really know anything, though? Would we be compatible, or would our fantasies just enjoy going on a date? Would you know the things about me that are actually lovely?
Will it matter to you in thirty years that I can play a mean round of poker and I enjoy the outdoors and I can cook you a meal that will make your eyes roll back in your head and I wear excellent perfume and can flirt like a demon when I try?
Or will it matter more that I can forgive in a heartbeat and will scratch your back when you’re tense and I laugh at even the most stupid jokes and I will think you are beautiful even when you’re not? (Oh… and I’ll be nice to your mom.)
I really don’t know.
Where does love actually begin?
Is friendship based on chemistry where it starts?
Or is sex that turns into genuine like for the other person where it starts?
Is chemistry important at all? It has to be, I think, but how important?
Or is a decision where it starts? And continues? And ends?
Or does it just happen and no one knows why or how but it does and hopefully it happens to you? Huzzah?
My mother taught me that all you can do is be the best person you can be and love others as much as possible, and beyond that, you’d just have to see.
Easy for her to say. She got married at 19, cute as a bug’s ear, and has more talent and love in her little finger than most of us have in every organ of our bodies.
But I know she’s right. And I know I’m not the best person I can be.
So that could be a start.
Oh… and if the key to love is just not thinking about it, well… yeah, I’m done for.
Granted, I am content to let a lot of it be a mystery. Really.
But I wouldn’t mind if love made sense for ten minutes. Long enough for me to dance around in blissful certainty to exactly two love songs.
I think that would get me happily to 40, at least.
Or tomorrow.
November 26th, 2007 at 11:18 am
My parents are still married after a gazillion years
Hey, stop making me feel old!
November 26th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Meg, this is a brilliant post. I have all of these same thoughts swimming around in my head as well. I wish that I could experience exactly what you said, “… I wouldn’t mind if love made sense for ten minutes. Long enough for me to dance around in blissful certainty to exactly two love songs.” Amen.
I also think that your mom’s right. And maybe it’s just not supposed to be easy…maybe when we find the ‘real thing,’ that’s when we’ll get it. I sure hope so anyway.
I love reading your blog- keep up the awesome work!
November 26th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Meg,
This IS a brilliant post, and I know you’re going to hate* this…but there is a reason that love is associated with the heart and not the brain. [I’m ducking. I’m under my desk.]
Rick
* I don’t get hate. Well, actually, I do, but I don’t~,:^)
November 26th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
The problem is, in the absence of heart time, your brain kind of takes over and tries to figure things out. :-)
The heart takes over when there’s a place to go. That I know.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Jenn M. summed it up best when she said: ‘love is a crapshoot’.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I agree with Rick, but I also understand your reply to him. In the absence of love the question is always ‘why?’. In the presence of it, your heart gets involved and tells your brain to shut up!
November 26th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
you are amazing and i love you
November 26th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Well, after 28 years of marriage, I can say that love does NOT make you worry all the time (but it does some of the time). It does NOT make you swoony all of the time (but it does some of the time). It’s reliable (except when it’s not). It’s serene contentment (except when it’s excited agitation). It does NOT make you miserable all the time (but it does sometimes). I fell for my husband because he made me laugh, and because we had the same values, and because he’s mighty cute, and because he’s not afraid to cry, and because he was willing to work to make sure our marriage worked, especially when we had hurt each other. I keep falling for him over and over again. So I guess it’s love, combined with a pretty intense like.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I agree, Meg, this is a lovely, insightful post.
You play poker? That’s good.
You wear nice perfume? That always helps. :-)
You cook up a storm? The stomach is one of three places that will grab a guy’s attention. :-)
You flirt like a demon? Hmmmm. Nope that’s okay too; flirt with the rest but come home to the best, as the saying goes.
Enjoy the outdoors? That would work for me too.
But you undersell yourself I think, Meg; you seem to bring far more good qualities to the table than you give yourself credit for, but then again, I think we’re all guilty of that at some point in our lives.
Being the best person you can be? For whom, exactly, and according to whom, exactly? If that’s a self-assessment then, fair enough; if we’re always honest with ourselves, we can find ways to better ourselves. Having said that though, do we reach a final point where we are who are and no further improvement is necessary or even sought? If being the best we can be is contingent on someone else’s assessment, then I think we run the risk of always falling prey to dissatisfaction, unhappiness, feelings of inadequacy, and of course, loneliness.
Where does love begin? The age-old question, girl, and you’re not alone in asking it.
Great post. :-)
November 26th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
“Long enough for me to dance around in blissful certainty to exactly two love songs.”
this approach may be what will end up working for you. love, like anything else in our lives, changes and frequently comes to an end. or, conversely, can be a constant.
tricky? definitely.
but, imhExperiences with it, is all ways worth having in any capacity that it can afford me.
have fun. and good post, btw.
;)
November 26th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I’ve been in love exactly twice. The first time ended badly. The second time, hasn’t ended.
I used a tamer version of LavaLife for introductions and posted a list of qualities: “You’ll run through the sprinklers at Brewer Park with me”, and “You won’t feel embarrassed when I skip down Rideau Street”. We courted through email. He wrote beautifully. I was intrigued and charmed.
We were older (well into our 30s), and came with baggage. We both accepted each other for where we were in life, and agreed we could support one another on the journey. We also were aware of the pitfalls of relationships and that they took work, a lot of work to keep things running. We took a chance and, so far, it’s paid off for us.
Bozette Mary refers to an “intense like”. That’s how I’d sum up my great friendship with my life-spark. My dear one, when asked for his input says “tell her lust. It’s really lust from a guy’s point of view.”
Sigh. Men. ;-)
November 26th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Love is a decision - one you make about doing the loving when the liking is difficult or seemingly impossible - as well as when the liking is easy. Being the best you (I will use “you” as a general term)can be changes from day to day,and has little to do with any one’s standards but yours …and it has more to do with being kind than about anything else. Set a goal to treat people at home better than you treat people who hold your livelihood in their hands or the people who do your hair, serve your latte, or cash out your groceries — people who you wouldn’t dream of being impolite to — and then the loving won’t be as difficult to maintain and the liking won’t be so hard to come by. If your idea of treating everyone the same is to treat them all badly then you have a lot to learn and you shouldn’t be surprised if relationships go sideways. Meaghan,( and I mean YOU specifically!) - you have these lessons well learned. This will be a bonus for the man who has the self-confidence to meet you as an equal and love you more than he loves himself.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Le sigh…
November 27th, 2007 at 8:26 am
It happened when I was both THINKING about love and actively LOOKING for it. I love to prove people wrong. Especially people who give trite advice.
I’m not the anything-est. And I still feel insecure about that. And he pays the consequences with my questioning. But he does it with patience that makes me love him all the more.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:43 am
meg, you are so right. love has many different faces. and for each of us, it’s different.
this was a wonderful post!
January 5th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Pardon the late, late comment but I read this tonight and your words were perfect after losing my temper with TemporaryRoommate after his 99th suggestion that I try online dating.
I’ve been lucky enough to love and I’m grateful for that. But I feel no wiser than I did when I was 12 and I experienced my first crush. Live is still a mystery that drives me mad, but I’m not quite ready to give up. A hopeless romantic, the emphasis being on hopeless.