Yesterday was the two year anniversary of when I met my ex-fiancee, B. It was also Bloomsday – the day in which Joyce’s Ulysses takes place (also the day Joyce met his wife). Today is my wedding anniversary. I was with my wife for 17 years, and we were married just shy of 10 of those (technically, we made it to 10, but we had already decided to divorce by the time the anniversary rolled around).
Our wedding was on a really hot day in 2006. We had an outside ceremony that lasted a little over five minutes. We had a great party inside. It was a whirlwind event – half a day that went by like a blur. The small details are always the odd memories. I remember we were having photos taken and didn’t get appetizers. I remember she looked beautiful. I remember the song we chose as our introduction – Skokiaan. I remember she had a price tag on the sole of her shoe. I remember the cake was good, we fed it to each other, and we saved a piece to freeze. I remember my brother gave an awkward and very Uhler-like toast – what he said, I don’t know. I remember our daughter ran around like a nut taking pictures with all of the disposable cameras. I remember I arranged to have letters delivered to my soon to be wife and my step-daughter at their hotel before the ceremony.
In my entire life, I’ve only told four women that I love them. My high school sweetheart (who I thought I’d marry), my wife (who I married), my first real post-divorce relationship, and my ex-fiancee (who I intended to marry). I love you. They aren’t words that I take lightly. This last time, I honestly thought would be the last person I’d ever say it to – she seemed like my forever person. In three of those four instances, my partner was the one to end things. The fourth, the marriage, was a mutual decision. Sometimes I wish I could be more free with those words – love more people in that way – maybe not make it such a serious commitment. Sometime I wonder if I say that because other people haven’t taken it as seriously as I have. I wonder if those people who love lots of people ever feel the full depths of love. Is one more preferable to the other? And I’m not talking the we get along pretty well kind of love – that’s important, but I’m talking the wow, I feel like I’m surrounded by light when I’m with this person type of love… I’ve talked to some people who say they’ve never experienced that – that makes me sad.
Very slowly, I’ve been re-reading some of the posts on this blog and unhiding them. I still make minor edits, and I’m still struggling with classifying and tagging the content. Most of what I’ve written falls under the categories of life, love, or relationships. There’s another general category that I haven’t figured out: “shit I find interesting” or more accurately, “commentary on shit I find interesting.” Of course, there are a lot of posts that slow walk through the intersection of relationships, my engagement, and love – where personal history meets therapy meets theory.
I’ve been pretty sloppy in terms of delineating between love and relationships – though I’m almost always talking about the romantic kind. I’ve probably used the terms interchangeably – that’s some of what I hope to clean up. I suppose the main distinction is that love is the overwhelming and sometimes confusing feeling (and all that accompanies that) and relationships is the practice of making it work and last – the day to day stuff of communication and understanding and patience.
Of course, those two things look different for different people. I feel like I’m constantly revising my definition. As a reminder, I tend to fall back on a few key quotes that speak to me. I’ve often cited Adrienne Rich:
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
I also quote Stephen Dunn a lot – in particular his sentiment that we will always disappoint each other – let’s do it better than anyone else has.
For me, love is this overwhelming euphoria occasionally tempered by a whole bunch of minor objections. It exceeds the day to day-ness of the relationship -which is why it can even outlast the relationship. It has varying degrees, it can run hot and cold, but it’s not something that just disappears.
As I continue to think about this question of how to live a good life, love seems like one of the more worthy pursuits (coupled with making a difference and experiencing the world). Too often I’ve written that I’m not ready to pursue it, when in reality, what I mean to say is that it hasn’t left me yet. What I feel may not be reciprocated, and that’s ok. What I need to learn to do is allow for the possibility of it coexisting with whatever comes next.