A friend of mine is currently writing a series of vignettes about love and relationships. I think they're brilliant - Release in particular. (Last Minutes is beautiful too.) We started talking about love - what it is, how you know and all that kind of thing.
I can't claim to have the answer. But I do know what love is to me. It's trust, truth and (urk, sorry to be sentimental/cliched) a bit of magic.
I'm lucky enough to have found my soulmate. There is no question about it. It was love at first sight for both of us. Well, lust at first sight but we both wanted to tell each other we loved each other on the day we met.
As it was, we waited.
When he told me three days into our relationship that he thought loved me, it seemed like we'd waited forever.
I told him I felt the same way.
He said "I lied."
The world collapsed around me as he paused for what seemed like forever (in actuality, under a minute.) Then said.
"I don't think I love you. I know I do."
We went racing round the quay to buy champagne beacuse it felt that momentous (we were in a bar on a boat and they didn't have any.) The off licence was closed and we ended up drinking nasty German wine in another pub.
That was when I first thought I loved him.
Three weeks later, I knew it was definitely love - and utterly different from anything I'd ever experienced before. We were watching TV, having a nice afternoon. The news came on and someone had died. I burst into floods of tears - not because of them but because I realised, at that second, that one day he'd die (yes, OK, everyone dies but I'd never thought about it in relation to him before). And the idea of a world without him was something I didn't want to comprehend.
I wasn't pre-menstrual. It was just like this feeling - that I knew he was 'the one' and that we were meant to be together.
And when he wiped away my tears and held me, thinking that I was sweet rather than insane, it just backed it up.
Five years on, the love is still as intense. OK, I'm not prone to random crying fits but, even in our worst moments, we've still known that we'll be together forever. We are utterly unable to lie to each other - even over stupid things. We tell each other that we love each other every day. At the same time (I hope) we're not one of those sickening couples who are all touchy-feely. Certainly, we've worked together (at various companies for four out of the five eyars we've been together) and people at the company have been utterly unaware we're a couple, even when we've gone out socially.
Let's face it; if you can live and work with someone for four years without killing each other, there's got to be something pretty special going on.
And it rocks.
(Apologies for the overt soppiness of this tone. Normal porntastic service will be resumed shortly.)
Posted by emilyd at February 08, 2003 08:21 PM