Valentine’s Day is looming large. Television programs are interrupted with commercials showing men presenting diamond necklaces to beautiful, grateful women. My e-mail box is crammed full of suggestions for Valentine’s gifts, some naughty, some nice. And store shelves are loaded with cards, each offering a ready-made expression of love that will perfectly describe how you feel about your special someone.
But I have a confession to make: My heart doesn’t always go pitter-pat the minute my husband walks into the room. When I go away on business trips, I don’t stay awake at night pining for him. And thoughts of him rarely flutter through my heart when I’m trying to concentrate on something else.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband deeply, and I don’t regret one moment of my four years with him. But my love for him is not defined by fairy tales or Hallmark or Kate Hudson films. Perhaps ours is the kind of love that sounds completely boring to some, but I wouldn’t trade what I feel for my husband for any other definition of love.
Oh, I’ve felt the other kind of “love” in the past. There’ve been men who’ve made me swoon, men I’ve gotten all moony-eyed about, spent hours daydreaming about. I’ve felt the kind of love that exhausted me, love that left me completely drained. I’ve even sought out that kind of love, rejected some perfectly good men who didn’t sweep me completely off my feet, stayed with some perfectly horrible men because they did, and figured it couldn’t possibly be real love unless I felt like I was walking on Cloud 9. Love shouldn’t be like that. Love should make you feel stronger, not make you weak in the knees. Love should allow you opportunities to grow, not keep you feeling like you want to spend every waking moment with that other person. Love should make you feel secure, giving you room to think about other things, not emotionally chain your happiness to one other individual so that you can’t move forward as a unique person.
Love means caring immensely about what happens to your partner. Love means being mindful of that person’s feelings, and taking responsibility for being a good friend above all. Love means being mindful of your own feelings, and being a good friend to yourself. And love can be very quiet. It can tiptoe up to you, sneak glances at you from across the room for ages before you even notice it’s there. It doesn’t have to rush in and bowl you over. In fact, love shouldn’t. Love, if it’s worth having, should demonstrate more respect for you than that.
Nonetheless, on this Valentine’s Day, we’ll demonstrate our happiness to the world in some very traditional ways. He’ll give me chocolates and a card, we’ll go out to dinner, each wearing something red, and we’ll hold hands and bat our eyelashes at each other. We’ll satisfy all onlookers that we’re a couple of lovebirds. And when we’ve done all that, I look forward to going back to just the way we are today — content to be nothing more than truly in love.
No comments:
Post a Comment