What is it about Love

It’s 1:58 a.m. I should be in bed, sleeping soundly. Instead I am up at my computer typing away. I can’t shut this brain of mine off. Thoughts, sentences keep racing through my mind begging to be written on paper. Tonight as tried to work on chapter 5 in my book, spring break and the first time I kissed Bobby etc. I found I was too distracted to finish writing the chapter. I was not distracted by Bobby but by questions that have always puzzled me my entire life. What is love and why is it so hard for some people to find, to keep? There have been times when I look at women who are married and wondered, how do they find love/marriage and not me? How is it some people get married two, three and even more times and I can’t find one person who loves me enough to want to marry me?

As my brain ventured through many moments of self pity, I began to question, what exactly is love? Do I expect too much of it? There are so many different types of love how does one define it? Why is it some people fall in love, marry for life while others marry several times? I know love exists, I have experienced the joy of love and the pain of losing it.

I met a woman this summer who was so in love, she was giggly, happy giddy in love with the man she was with at the bar. They hung on each other’s every word and bodies. The week before he asked her to marry him, she said yes. They had been dating a total of four months but they told me they knew instantly when they met they were soul mates. In the course of our conversation I learned this would be the woman's third marriage! She was only thirty four, he was thirty one and has never been married. I should add I learned later in the conversation, she had been engaged two times previously, "between her marriages". I could not fathom how someone could be married three times by the age of thirty four. Let alone engaged a total of five times. I wanted to say to the guy, hey wise up, you might want to rethink this whole marriage thing. If she has been engaged a total of five times and married twice, she obviously does not excel at commitment. But who am I to judge, I have never been married, I do not know her life story. I only have a twenty minute bar conversation to go on. Besides they looked happy or drunk I am not sure which was the better definition of that night so why should I ruin thier happiness with logic? I can honestly say while sitting there talking to the two of them, it was not self pity but rather curiosity that made me question love. I found myself looking at her wondering what was it about her that has made five men propose to her? What did she possess that drove men crazy enough to want to marry her?

Over the next few days I continued to wonder was it possible to be in love five times or was it as I suspected this woman was in love with the idea of being in love? The guy seemed reasonably sane, so why didn’t his inner alarm go off when he found out she had been engaged FIVE times and married twice? I know mine would have said, RUN!! Can you be so in love you look past previous relationship failures hoping you are the happily every after? Maybe since I have never been married I am too jaded to understand love? I no longer trust what I feel or trust I will find love.

I have often wondered, is love something we know in our hearts instantly or is love something that happens over time? Which love lasts longer? Which love is stronger? Is there only one true love for each of us? Or is it possible to be in love with many different people? If love ends was it really love to begin with? If you are in love, the person dies and you find another love who do you spend eternity with in Heaven? Can you love two people differently but with the same intensity?

When it comes to love does anyone have the definitive answer as to why some people fall in love and others don’t? Can anyone ever truly explain the emotions of the human heart/soul? I believe if we define love, how it works, what makes it last, love suddenly loses its' mystic. What my brain finally decided, there is something wonderfully magical about falling in love so why try to explain or understand it? Whether love lasts a hundred days or for all eternity we should all enjoy love when we find it! Hold on to it as long as possible and thank God when it comes into our life!