Can you fall in love with someone for the second time? I do not mean to infer that I ever fell out of love with my husband, but at some point in a relationship some of that magic dissipates and becomes companionship. You are teammates well versed in one another’s strengths and weaknesses and you know when the other needs a little back up. This is a lovely, comfortable, trusting phase of a relationship and it is inevitable, should your relationship last long enough, that you will at some point settle in to this well-worn, comfy couch of a love. What I am asking, is if it is possible to regain a piece of that passion and intensity and yes, magic, that you once had even after lying on the comfy couch for several years. I think it is and I think I have that.
I swear I have never loved my husband more than I do at this moment. I feel joyous and happy at having him in my life in a way I have not felt in a while. At some point, you just get so used to having that partner supporting you, that you no longer turn to make sure they are still there. For me, not only do I keep catching myself remembering how lucky I am that he is there, I am also surprised and delighted by it each time. I hate that he has been gone for the last 10 months, but I do believe that it give us back something we were in danger of losing: each other.
I have always loved Jeff. I loved him the night we met and I have fallen in love with him a little bit over and over again at different phases in our life together. The first time I saw him ironing; the day in the rough waters off the coast of Delaware that he held onto me when I got crushed and tumbled by a huge wave; the time I had food poisoning and fainted in his arms in the hallway only to awaken back in bed with his worried face hovering over mine. This man has earned my love repeatedly and yet our life has been difficult these last two years. We moved three times, I couldn’t get a job, we both missed our home in NYC, we didn’t have friends, and sometimes it felt like we didn’t have each other.
That’s the problem with old, comfortable and companionable love, you still love one another, but you lose the essence of that person in the day to day. I certainly wouldn’t want to suffer through a year-long deployment every time we started to take one another for granted, but in many ways this time apart has been a gift, because it gave me back the man I love so much it’s hard to keep from smiling for no reason. I don’t believe that another person can be responsible for your happiness, but even so, I know that without Jeff I was not happy. These days, as I count down the last seven weeks of our separation each thought of him brings a smile and an overwhelming feeling of love, happiness and something more. I feel anticipation. When was the last time you couldn’t wait to see your partner’s face when you wake up in the morning or come home in the evening? Well, I feel like that every day, so I guess in some ways 18 months of misery and a year of war was exactly what I needed to fall in love all over again.
I thought this a beautiful entry. And I know from experience that question and that exhileration when passion flares again, or when one is "under the weather" of the mundane, lamenting the seemingly lost flashes of brilliant fiery love. There is a secret, about love, though, that gets lost, and I think it resides in your sentence: "That's the problem with old, comfortable love, you still love one another, but you lose the essence of that person in the day to day."
ReplyDeleteThere's no antidote for that feeling, in love; and the hardest task of love is to remember that it is in fact the mundane, the comfortable, the everyday, that is as much love as the passionate, exciting, excited love. In love, we remember the outrageous beautiful passionate moments and long for their return. But when we lose love, those memories mean less, mean little; when we lose love, we miss the most mundane, the most everyday.
For three years, I woke hours before my last love. She could sleep forever. I'd get up; I'd make my coffee, careful to do it quietly to protect her sleep. I'd rinse the pot; I'd measure the coffee; I'd run water. I'd do all with a stealth. Once I asked her: "Do I wake you when I make the coffee? Can you hear me?" And she said, "The only part that wakes me, is when you stir your coffee." It was something about the particular pitch of the spoon against ceramic. So I began to find ways to stir quietly. I gripped the cup in the fullness of my palm to deaden the ring of the metal spoon and ceramic mug. I made sure to lift the mug off the counter and stir in my hand.
We've been apart, painfully, for a year and a half. Six months ago, in a house she's never stepped foot in, I caught myself as I made my coffee, grasping that cup in the palm of my hand to deaden the ring. The most mundane, ingrained, unthinking thing -- the habit of protecting my love's sleep -- had persisted so profoundly that I was still protecting it long after she was so far away I couldn't have roused her with the loudest church bell. To this day, though I try to break the habit, I still muffle the ring of the spoon and the cup. These, too, are the facts of love: the mundane, the everyday, the habit. We simply do not know it until the habits of loving persist beyond the presence of love.
So, by all means, fall in love all over again; rejuvenate; regain passion. But exalt in the mundane, too. Find the most tedious, habitual, boring, pathetic fact of love everyday, and take a moment to exalt it, too. It's what you would miss most. It's what I miss most.
RMK
Having the opportunity to fall in love again is a gift...and I wouldn't call war a gift in any frame of reference, but there are always silver linings. Just remember as your soldier comes home that the anticipation and the expectation can be disappointing in reality if your husband is still human. So love every second of your count-down, throw yourself into his arms and make love to him with reckless abandon. But keep perspective that neither love, nor people aren't perfect. At some point you'll smell the morning breath and realize that your comfy couch is just that...familiar and perhaps in need of an upgrade. But love is just as much an action as an intense, overwhelming life-affirming sensation. So prepare yourself for the ups and downs and ins and outs of readjusting to each other, and then for the comfortable, wonderful and easy-going familiarity of the imperfectly 'perfect fit'. Neither of you will be able to live up to each other's fantasy, but you've agreed to die trying. When you don't feel it, you fake it and hope for more tomorrow. And to lay next to someone who is willing to do the same is the best feeling in the world.
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