I first thought it was love when I got that giddy feeling when I saw him – when he’d come up to where I was working, purposely buying some stupid thing so I’d ring him up. I thought it was love when I got the courage to tell him I had a crush on him, and when he worked up the courage to ask me out. I thought it was love when, on our first date, we didn’t want to go home so we went on Part II, making the date last hours longer than it was supposed to. (No, we didn’t have sex, silly.) I thought it was love the first time we kissed goodnight. I thought it was love when I couldn’t think about anyone else, no matter what I was doing.
I was wrong.
Those are just crazy hormones.
I knew it was love when we went out for our second “date anniversary” and he found some sly way to ask for my ring size. I knew it was love when he started walking down the aisle before me and kept trying to sneak looks backwards so he could see me following him. I knew it was love when he changed the flat tire in the rain and didn’t ask for help. I know it’s love when he licks the plate after dinner and tells me it was good, even when it wasn’t. I know it’s love when he manages our 401K and takes the trash out and farts in his sleep.
That giddy stuff? That’s swirling hormones playing havoc with the brain chemistry. That’s horniness and the novelty of the new. I’d had that before with every boy- or girlfriend when it was new. And then it wears off and we come back to earth and someone leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor and you fight about it and you realize they’re not the one so you dump ‘em and go for the next giddy lay.
No, it’s love when they leave the wet towel on the floor and you don’t mind because that’s small potatoes in the grand scheme and you know you’ll be spending your life together anyway. It’s love when they remember you hate a wet towel on the floor and don’t put it there in the first place because your wishes and needs are important to them. It’s when they do the crap jobs right next to you, like when he helped me plant the garden last Spring because he knew I could use the help with heavy lifting and he likes what I grow too. It’s when we make plans for the future knowing it’s not going to fall through before then. It’s when I feel more complete with him, but not incomplete without him. It’s when we lay on the bed, naked in the summer, our hair tangled up together, sweating in the godawful heat and laughing and miserable and glad to be together more than anything else. Yeah, that’s love.