d'être entendu

I dated several people before I ever met Sweetheart. I had several serious boyfriends and had two relationships that lasted over 3 years each. Working out the numbers would be difficult, because how do you count – people you said were your “boyfriends”, people you went on dates with and then didn’t like and didn’t see again. What’s “going out”. 

But let’s answer the more interesting question you asked: 

Sweetheart was not the first person I ever loved. 

I think it’s bullshit that the person you decide to marry will be your first love. Sure, some people will marry the first person they love. But I think that for a lot of people, they will have loved many people before they find their forever partner. 

I loved a couple other partners before I found Sweetheart. I loved them for who I was at the time– and they loved me for who I was. But as I grew and evolved, and as they grew and evolved, we grew in different directions. 

Sometimes that love fell away completely and we no longer are in contact. Sometimes it changed form and instead we remained friends. 

Loving other people before I met Sweetheart helped me learn how to love, learn how to be a good partner. 

Each time you love someone, that love will be entirely different from anyone else you have ever loved. Some of those loves will be intense and passionate, others will be based on shared passions, others based on companionship. Each love you share with another person is unique, and will only happen once in a lifetime. 

But I knew Sweetheart was the one person I could love for the rest of my life because the love I had for him was somehow all those types of love at once – it was passionate and based on companionship. It was love with space for growth and evolution. It was love where we both remained individuals, even while being part of a couple. It was love based on trust and respect. Love with something else that had been missing my whole life. 

Real love is not this magical disney thing where you see someone across a room and you know instantly they’re your prince (or princess) charming. For 99.9% of people, your first love will not be your only or your last. 

But having loved other people does not make your forever love less special – in many ways I think it makes you appreciate how incredible it is even more. 

Real love is so much better than the fairytales or the storybooks. Real love is an incredibly intimate experience of trust and communication. Real love is shared withs someone who supports your goals as fervently as you support theirs and who brings the other half in to work towards your goals as a couple. 

Real love has faults, flaws, imperfections. The person you love will have broken places, things that make you crazy. The things you loved about them will sometimes be the things you hate the most about them. Their intelligence will create their dogged devotion to work that means they miss birthday dinners or anniversaries. Their caring heart will mean they spend time helping friends and family and everyone else and not spending enough time with you. Their meticulousness becomes obsession with cleanliness that makes you crazy you can’t just leave your socks on the floor. 

But you love them all the same. You love them even when you’re angry at them. 

Real love is the person you want to work for. Because love is not a feeling. It’s just not. It’s work. It’s getting up every day and deciding that you want to be a better, more understanding partner. It’s wanting to work to be a better version of yourself to make your partner proud. It’s wanting to be the best husband/wife/mother/father/etc you can be in your household. 

I knew I could love this man forever, because every day I wake up and I am amazed that he picked me (and I know he feels the same). We are not perfect, but we are both fighters and will fight for this relationship (and soon marriage and then family) for the rest of our lives. 

We share values, goals, and visions of how we want our lives to be. We believe in the same important things. We share philosophies on the big things – how to raise children, what is most valuable in life, what makes a good marriage, etc.