Image by cleopatra69 via Flickr As Jerry Seinfeld once said so aptly to the Hertz agent, "You know how to TAKE the reservation but you don't know how to HOLD the reservation." The same is true with love. Maybe you know how to FALL in love, but you don't know how to STAY in love. Well, my friends, roll up your sleeves, because there is work to be done in order to keep love alive.
Maybe you are a junkie for falling in love, as I once used to be. I just came across a journal I had typed on an electric typewriter from 1979 through 1981, just before I met Mark. It was like finding the diary of a completely other person. I have no memory of many of the people and situations I wrote about. It's like coming across a sexy blog in pre-computer times. I was 24 in '79; just picture a "recovering Catholic girl" who realizes that she is free to do anything and everything she feels like doing.
If I didn't appreciate the way one boyfriend treated me, then I could simply walk away and find a new one. So that's what I did. By the time I met Mark I was seeing four guys at the same time. I got to be pretty good at juggling them, but I was also keeping each of them at arm's length. Each of them knew and loved a different facet of me. No one man knew ALL my facets; this was my way of protecting myself.
And then along came Mark. The universe cleared my calendar on Valentine's Day of 1982 so that the only thing I planned to do was sing in a play called "Pandora's Box." And thus Mark and I met while standing on the balcony of the theater before the play was to begin. He was a videographer who had been hired to shoot the play.
Next Valentine's Day will mark 30 years together. Even though we have stumbled across bumps in our path, most of our time together has been stellar. Any relationship worth having is going to go through an annealing process - like the scene in any Merlin movie where the sword goes through a fire and is stronger for it.
We have now reached the point where we barely even have to talk to each other because our telepathy is so strong. We have multitudes of shared memories that we can share via a simple wink. In our 30 years together, I can say that it's only gotten better.
Are you addicted to falling in love? Wishing you the joys of true love.
