Profiles of Love

I’m down in New York City this weekend, visiting friends and taking in the city’s St Patrick’s Day festivities.  I have the pleasure of staying with two very close friends of mine who happen to be recently engaged.  The combination of Valentine’s Day merely a month ago and my friends recently becoming engaged makes me think about love, that enigmatic emotion and feeling that we as human beings all ultimately strive for.  Never having been in love myself – that I know of – I decided to ask various couples I know what love meant to them and how long it was after they started dating their significant other that they knew they were in love.

I hadn’t intended for us to be in a relationship.  But as we started to get to know each other, I knew that our connection – whatever it maybe – was special. I fall in love with him everyday, and that’s how I know that I love him.

warm fuzzies; unexplained giddiness. It’s not always easy, and long term takes work, but the heightened emotions can come pretty quickly and pretty early on.

I guess I knew because the thought of him not in my life, and possibly in someone else’s, disturbed me greatly.

I’d say it was 3 months or so. It was a feeling that came out verbally when we were talking, and I guess I just knew. And there are ups and downs. So if on one day I feel totally in love and the next day I don’t, I trust both as completely normal, and realize that love is like that. But at least for me, it is something I just know in my gut.

The last quote came from one of my recently engaged friends, and the idea that love can be there one moment and gone the next was surprising to me.  What may be surprising to you is that all of these quotes came from men, and more than that from gay men.  The point here is that love is universal.  Love does not care if you are white or black, gay or straight, Jewish or Catholic.  Love does not judge us or cast us out for being different.  Love crosses – no smashes – through boundaries: language, religious, cultural, and ethnic barriers on which we as human beings often place far too much emphasis.  At our core, every human being strives to achieve love, and there is no choice in that matter.  We do not choose to love or choose who we love.  We just do.