16 thoughts on “about love.”

1. My parents are still married after a gazillion years

   Hey, stop making me feel old!

2. 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!

3. 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~,:^)

4. 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.

5. Jenn M. summed it up best when she said: ‘love is a crapshoot’.

6. 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!

7. you are amazing and i love you

8. 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.

9. 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. :-)

10. “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.

    ;)

11. 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. ;-)

12. 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.

13. Le sigh…

14. 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.

15. meg, you are so right. love has many different faces. and for each of us, it’s different.

    this was a wonderful post!

16. 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.