love is?!

Lynn Ruth,

As always I could not agree more with what you have to tell us. I grew up in a fairly conventional family and because of that I always thought, growing up, that love would arrive in my life like a highschool diploma-- a thing that would just be there when I was ready for it. But I dreaded it, too, for I saw all those pimplefaced boys, the jocks, the jerks, the dorks and...most of them did not read books. For a long time I preferred books to boys because they had so much more to tell me.
When I reached my twenties and went to university I was again appalled by the boys I saw around me: the drinkers, the frat boys, the promiscuous ones (it is not fair that we do not have a male version for the word "slut"), and so on and so forth. Give me a book any time, I remember thinking. My mother was getting worried because I never dated anyone. I felt it was none of her business to ask so I told her I was a dyke, which shut her up. I was not a lesbian because I was not interested in girls either. But it nonetheless put pressure on me-- that invisible pressure of society, that sickly sense of having to conform. Of course I had my own doubts but I tried to live my life the best I could. I also decided to stop looking, believing that Mr Rights and Prince Charmings were an illusion, a Hollywood invention, a cheap romantic fable that tricked us into believing that true happiness lies in the finding of true love.
It was when I stopped looking and signed up for a year of grad school in Chapel Hill, my first year abroad, that I ran into an American in The Hague who swept me off my feet. Sensitive, sweet, tall, trusting and full of humor and good laughs. Our first kiss happened a week before I was taking off for the States. He stayed behind in Holland, where he worked. We continued on a long journey of long-distance phone calls, letters and incredible airport reunions...and reader, I married him...maybe the only one I could have ever married because I have not seen/met anyone like him again, after that.
But what I really want to say is that I agree with Lynn Ruth-- relationships, marriages (the bad ones) have become like commodities. And for a relationship/love to work, it can't be a commodity, or be there when we need or demand it. A relationship starts and begins with the love for the other. It is the circle of the wedding ring.
In our fast culture where we can have everything on demand, we get, if we don't watch out, an inflated sense of self. I find a lot of people around me way too self-obsessed and self-involved and those people, I am sorry to say, do not make good lovers, or relationship/marriage material (or even friends for that matter). Love has many dimensions and colors but you can only enjoy them if you are prepared to deny yourself a little and make yourself vulnerable to the other. The other has to do the same for it to work. I am blessed to have found a guy like Jon, but you know what, I would also have been blessed if I had to live my life alone. After all, romantic love is only 1/10th of the total experience...