So I’m getting married in a few days…

Wait, let me back up a bit.

When I was a kid, I was pretty sure I’d find true love. I though I’d see a girl one day, and I’d look into her eyes, and she’d look into mine, and I’d see stars and I’d know that she was the one, and that’d be that.

And then I grew up.

I held on to that idea for quite some time actually, and I waited for the girl with the stars in her eyes longer than I should have. I had my first girlfriend when I was 10 or so (we never dared kiss, even if our friends were hiding us from prying eyes on the school playground). Around 13, a really cute 14 year old used me to get her ex back (I waited by the phone all day). Around 22, I had a thing with a girl who’s boyfriend was abandoning her, and I hurt her when I didn’t understand she wasn’t serious about us not being serious (I still feel bad about that one).

Then a few real relationships (with actual love), a few crushes (those hurt way more than they should), and a healthy share of enjoyable one night stands (and too many not enjoyable ones, too)… And after a while I came to the conclusion that love wasn’t all it was cranked up to be.

It’s not like I gave up on the idea of loving someone, or on love as a concept even. I just realized that the hyper-romanticized idea of love didn’t actually exist in the real world. You know the one: what we’re being told about love in the poems, and the songs, and the movies. Complete abandon, infinite bliss, and the juvenile certainty that things last forever… All that crap.

Based on 30+ years of reliable empirical evidence, my conclusions were that you could probably have very strong feelings for someone, care for them deeply, and want them to be safe. And if you were lucky, they’d want that for you too. And if you were really lucky, you’d also think each other was hot, and then it would probably be cool to get married, or spend the rest of your lives together, or whatever. And that was that.

 

And then I met Sonja.

If I could sum up the first few weeks of our relationships, I’d say it was unbelievable. Quite literally: if someone had told me a story like that, I simply would have not believed it.

The instant I met her, I thought… she was hot. Don’t judge, that’s what we all do.

The instant after that though, I starting thinking there was something special about her. She was just different from any other girl I had ever met. The way she smiled, the way she talked, the way she looked at me… I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was definitely an attraction there. (And thankfully, the attraction was mutual, as I later learned.)

As we started seeing each other, I realized she was as cool as she was hot. And clever, too. She would call me on my bullshit like no one else did. And how she made me laugh! Like only my very best mates ever could. She was so perfect, I wasn’t really sure what was happening; if she was for real, and if she was actually finding me good enough for her (I still don’t understand how that happened, by the way).

And there was the other side of things: how comfortable I was with her. Totally and completely myself. I didn’t have to pretend, I didn’t have to change myself at all… I started it I guess: I didn’t want another thing where I’d try to be someone else for a while, and then struggle to be myself again, so I was me from the get go. And, surprisingly enough, she liked me anyway.

After a few months, I was pretty sure I was going to ask her to marry me at some point. By the time I did, I was 200% sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

And somewhere along the way, I started understanding the stuff they talk about in all the poems and the songs and the movies. It was like before that, I could hear the words but they felt foreign, like something I was being explained. But now I was like “yup, that’s exactly it, right there with you bro!”. It was like part of the same club with them, and we were talking about some secret we knew but others might not. And I know that there are a few of you reading this that are smiling, because you understand exactly what I’m talking about.

So I’d like to talk to the others for a few seconds

And that’s the whole point of this whole article really: to let people know that true love (or whatever you want to call it) wasn’t just invented by writers with too much time on their hands. We all wonder whether it’s real or not when we first hear about it. And some of us never get an answer… Well I got mine: it’s real. And more importantly, if you haven’t found it yet, I’d say you should probably keep looking for it. I’m not saying you should stick to your OCD “perfect mate” checklist forever, and I’m not saying you should look for someone that’s pretty or clever or likes you the way you are. What I’m saying is, when you find that person, you’ll know. You won’t wonder, you won’t ask if he’s truly committed or if she’s too annoying. You’ll just know you’re really in love, and what came before was just a faded photocopy of it.

So, that’s that. I can see the stars in her eyes, and I’m getting married in a few days. 🙂

Hugs to absolutely all of you!