I Love Love.

Valentine's Day had me thinking about love.  Thinking about love led to thinking about past loves.  Thinking about past loves led to thinking about the things I have learned about love over the years.  And you know I love to share what I've learned...

My first love was also my best friend from kindergarten through elementary school.  It was a love built around pulling pig-tails, playing King of the Hill, and being in the same class year after year.  From this love I learned:

• Drama is a waste of time.  Say what you mean.  Mean what you say.
• Love is worth the risk of cooties.
• Boys can be sensitive.  Sometimes you have to let them win.
• Loyalty is important.

My junior high love was a love of firsts.  First love letter.  First date.  First dance.  First kiss.  First break-up.  This love was exciting and new.  It was thrilling and terrifying all at the same time.  Eventually, my insecurities got the better of me.  From this love I learned:

• Love is about sharing.  Your thoughts.  Your feelings.  Your science homework.
• Even the toughest guys are afraid of something.
• Nothing smells as good as your boyfriend's jacket.
• Picking a 3 hour drama for your first movie date is a mistake.
• Giving your friends too much influence over your relationships is a bigger mistake.
• Those 80's movies starring people like Molly Ringwald and John Cusack in which couples break up over misunderstandings but then end up back together as the music swells at the end of a montage showing how miserable they were apart are a bunch of crap.  Romantic, misleading crap. 

One of my high school loves was a long, drawn out, on again - off again affair while the other was largely confined to my own head.  In the first, I reveled in the feeling of being pursued and desired despite being ambivalent about the relationship myself.  In the second, I fruitlessly longed for a friend to realize that we were perfect for each other.  From these loves I learned:

• Balance is essential in a relationship.
• Pity is not a good reason to be with someone.  Nor is it a good reason for someone to be with you.
• What comes around, goes around.
• Love can make you act like a crazy person in a great many ways, all of them embarrassing to think about after the fact.

In college, I was sure I had found the love of my life.  We had so much in common.  We liked the same food and the same music and the same goals.  We were perfect together.  Except, under these surface commonalities we had very little in common.  I was traveling through life on a freeway toward a well-mapped location, and he was traveling on a winding, overgrown path to destinations unknown.  I needed organization, plans, and focus while he needed freedom and the unexpected.  I was learning to appreciate my new-found responsibilities while he was learning to appreciate the newly hired girl at work.  From this love I learned:

• There are still some true romantics out there.
• Sometimes good things come to an end.
• From the inside a relationship looks very different than it does from the outside.
• It isn't called compromise if one person is making all the sacrifices.
• Loyalty is REALLY important.
• I am a hell of a lot stronger than my high school self would ever have guessed.

Shortly before moving to California, I met my husband.  I could use up all of the space on the internet telling you how wonderful he is, but I'll save that for another post.  Let me summarize by saying that from this love I have learned:

• The difference between "a love" and "The Love" is immediately obvious.
• It is possible to know you are in love with someone without ever having seen their face.
• Keeping two completely different people, each with their own backgrounds and personalities and issues, rowing together smoothly isn't impossible, but it takes a whole lot of practice.

It is now long past my bedtime, so I am going to stop trying to come up with an appropriate conclusion and just end this.  Ain't love grand?