To Love and Be Loved
It’s different than I thought. For one thing, the positive affect you feel grows month by month, rather than being a rocket to a peak and then a slow loss of altitude. You learn better how to avoid stepping on them, they learn better how to avoid stepping on you, and the kind joyful moments become more frequent and the sticky ones less so.
You know this trajectory is itself not likely to continue unaltered forever but the more you learn how to love this person the more confidence you have in how you’ll weather storms together.
You’d be forgiven for thinking I’d never had a relationship before. My last serious one lasted nearly twice as this one has, but was conducted long distance, coast to coast. We saw each other every few months and talked hours each night and I was perfectly satisfied by it. This is an altogether different thing.
It’s beautiful to feel friendly love and romantic love overlapping, one peeking out from behind the other and back again in quick succession. Romantic love always stymied me, made me feel like someone regarding me with the warmth and clarity and dignity of a friendship was out of reach while they desired me.
Most of all it’s so undeniably fun. I spend every day with a person I’m delighted to trade jokes or silly noises or treats with, a person that makes everything I have to do a little more fun. Everything we do together is a silly little adventure (or a real, grand adventure) and every day I feel more like the irrepressible giggly child I used to be, getting asked to stop talking so loud in her excitement.
I trust it so implicitly, is another thing - sometimes you just know that something you have is not only broadly good, it is particularly good *for you* and good for the person you are with.
I love her, she’s special, I’m fortunate and may we all be so fortunate, amen.