The Truth About Love

• A few weeks ago, my sister and I were discussing misconceptions about  Finding Love, Dating, Staying in Love etc.  Since she is completely clever in everything, especially with words, I asked her to write about it all,  to clear up a few silly notions and ideals we (especially some of us girls)  hold onto, thinking that if we turn turn down enough men, bury our hearts deep,deep inside, we will somehow miraculously come up with the purest form/equation of love ever known. 

  Bah, Humbug! 

  Let's get real about it!   

  
  
  
  

  

  Lu-Anne (my sister, the author) and Adam. Completely adorable. Completely in love...the real kind.

  
  What Love Isn't.
  

   by Lu-Anne M. Haukaas

  
  

  
  

  So I know I'm going to knot a lot of knickers by declaring that I know what love is. Well, specifically, what it's not. So let me start this by saying that what I know is not at all complete. However, what I know is gutsy and has been good to me.

  
  

  
  

  I track the source of my initial love delusions to early Anne of Green Gables exposure. Too heavy a burden to lay on a children's classic? Maybe. But it taught girls everywhere to guard their own petulance as independence. It taught them to wait for the golden, the good, the god-like, the "Gilbert." Dishy, maybe. But real-world compatible? Not in a million years. I mean, come on, any man that includes the words "diamond sunbursts and marble halls" in his proposal cannot be worth his salt or suspenders.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I'm pretty sure that what we imagine we want in love and what we need in love are two very different things.

  
  

  So let's get down to the mudboots and marbles. (That's my own version of "nitty gritty." I'm hoping it'll catch on.)
  
  

  
  
  

  1. There is no such thing as soul mates.

  
  

  The sooner we come to terms with this fact, the better off we will be.There is not one, single, perfect, shining knight waiting in the haze to carry us off to sweet oblivion. That would be a bottle of wine. The best we can hope for is to come across an army of men and hit it off with one.

  
  

  
  

  But, honey, no matter how dreamy he is, somewhere in this world there is another who will do just as well.

  
  

  Believe me. The sooner we stop pinning our hopes on an ideal, the sooner we'll come round to a very real world peopled with some very real men who are really quite fantastic in very real and very ordinary ways. Like I once told Adam: "I don't believe in soul mates, but sometimes, you almost change my mind."

  
  

  2. Go into a relationship for the fun of it.

  
  

  That's right. I know I just smashed the holy grail of all good little Christian girls, but someone had to. The alternate tagline could be: "Keep it simple." When I first met Adam, I swore we would never marry. I had just come out of one of those "forever till death do us part" sort of relationships, and I really didn't see us going anywhere. And I think that was the magic of it. I expected nothing so I didn't attach the overwrought and over-ripe to its inception. We had the chance to breathe and grow normally. It was easy, like velcro shoes and sun-tea. We had no future, but I felt quiet inside. My long term thoughts were: "Today was fun. He's fun. We're fun. Maybe I'll see him again tomorrow." I had always been a "I wonder what our children will look like" on the first date kind of girl, so this was different for me. I was in it "for the fun of it." Nothing more, nothing less. I was learning to back off a little. You see, sometimes we can taste the future and the fondant of our wedding cake too soon, and then we make it all too serious.

  
  

  
  

  So, flirt a little, honey! Say 'yes' to a few dates. And maybe come back from a good one with a little less lippy then you left with. But for goodness sake, stop putting pressure on yourself!

  
  

  You don't need to see the two of you, hands clasped, you in white, him shaking in terror, your unborn children named and off to college in those early days. There does not need to be a "deep calling unto deep" moment over your first cup of coffee. (If there is, think twice. See my "diamond sunbursts/marble halls" contention.) In the beginning of a relationship, the worst thing to do is to over-think it. Don't find eternal significance in the song playing on the car's radio when he picks you up. In fact, drive your own damn car. Most of all: do enjoy yourself. Do take it one day at a time.

  
  

  3. When it's real, it's not always pretty.

  Adam's never been good about anniversaries. He does have a valid excuse. We were friends for so long that dating just sort of happened, and five years later, we have yet to formally celebrate the passage of time. I sometimes envy girls with their annual flowers and chocolates and trained doves cooing "The Way You Look Tonight," but Adam does stop the truck on the way home from a fishing trip and make his friends wait while he picks me wildflowers because he knows I prefer them. He's never once written me a poem, but when I'm sick, he sits on the other side of the bathroom door on the floor because he knows I hate to have anyone see me throwing up but he wants me to know he's there all the same. When we met, there was nothing chemical--no explosions in the night sky, no dive bombing belly--but now, every time I hear his dear tread up the steps, see the lock turning, I have to jump up from what I'm doing and bob awkwardly, excitedly by the door to get that first, finally kiss.

  
  

  The fights are just as dear as the flowers. And that's what you get when it's real--mistakes and missteps and misgivings but oh, so much joy.

  
  

  You see, for everything that love is not--the stilted, the gilded, the buffed and beautiful--it is a million healthy things, happy things, whole things, normal things. It's oatmeal for breakfast. It's hummus for lunch. It's "come hell or high water," and who knew that high water meant new boots or that hell could shine as bright as the sun.