What Is Love?

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

This concept of love is a slippery, tricky thing, isn't it?

Filmmaker used that word early on. Not to say that we aren't still in the realm of "early on" (we've been dating for two months). But still. Earlier on than I would expect a person to say it.

It made me question what love is. I tell people I love them all the time, and I mean it. I love my friend Mike. I love my classmates. I love Matt Damon. But with so many kinds of love in the world, it's difficult to say anything about love in a relationship without wondering what kind of love it is versus what kind of love it's being interpreted as. Hence, it's a word I like to avoid. Much in the same way that I generally avoid the word "boyfriend" (a title that I bestowed upon Filmmaker and he wears proudly).

Skype photo of Filmmaker being goofy

He told me not to say it until I was ready. He acted like he was honestly okay with that for awhile before the insecurity kicked in. He wondered if my reluctance to respond to his affectionate language was a sign that I was going to leave him. He was concerned that I looked at our relationship as something temporary or frivolous.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

I responded to him with an e-mail at an ungodly hour of the morning, saying that I don't look at our relationship that way, which is in fact the reason I wasn't going to use that phrase lightly. I wrote that I wasn't going to use it until I felt it with every part of me. I wrote,

Right now, here's what I know...

I honestly care about you.
I'm happier with you than without you.
I miss you. Constantly.
I feel safer when I'm with you.
You make me want to work hard and succeed in things (and finish my stupid frakking Analysis papers) so that I'll make you proud of me, and so that I'll be worthy of someone as wonderful as you.
I'd rather talk to you than anyone else in the world.


And here's what I love:

I love the way you look at me.
I love that you take pictures of me being an idiot and like them.
I love it when you say or text ridiculous random things to me.
I love the way you hold me.
I love how much you make me laugh.
I love making you smile.
I love that your Action-SciFi-Fantasy-Comedy-Drama is so important to you.
I love staring at you and reminding myself that I'm the lucky one who gets to call you her boyfriend.
I love the way you smell.
I love that our relationship feels broken in even though it's so new.
I love that you take the time to actually listen to the music I send you without me asking you to do so.
I love that you put yourself in challenging situations.
I love that you don't give up.
I love that you [drove 5 hours] to "see about a girl."
I love that you respect me.
I love that you're open and honest with me.
I love that you were willing to watch Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and put vinegar on your strawberries.
I love that you're okay with setting rules in our relationship.
I love being able to support you and help you through your less secure days.
I love talking to you for obscene amounts of time every day... even when it keeps us up past curfew.
I love when you say you love me.

I love so many things about you, about our relationship, about the effect you have on me...
And maybe that is indeed an accurate verb to describe the way I feel about you.

But I'm not going to say it yet.

When I do say it, you'll know how much it means.


He wrote me the next morning that when he read that e-mail, it was the second time in his life that he's wept tears of joy (the first being when he was accepted to film school).

Skype photo of Filmmaker

Last week, he sent me an e-mail in a similar tone to the one I had written him (which I mentioned in my last post, I believe). I won't share the entirety of the e-mail, as most of it is just for me. But I thought I'd share some of his corresponding list.


- I love all your little quirks: the hiccups, the squeaks, the jaw pop, the odd flexibility, the obsession with names, the clean-up time outfits, and… well… all the ridiculously little things, many of which you are self conscious about, but which really just make you all the more endearing.

- I love the way you dance. Completely free of worries or self conscience. It’s inspiring.

- I love that you are willing to struggle so hard to be the best at what you do.

- I love that, even though you may be "competitive," you do everything in your power to support the people around you and help them to succeed.
[NOTE: he put it in quotation marks because we had just had a discussion in which he insisted that I am competitive, and I had insisted that I am not]

- I love that you are capable of being both proud and insecure, but that you’re a healthy enough person to keep either trait from becoming a flaw.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

- I love that you are somehow both wise to the world where you need to be but also sheltered and innocent in many ways that are good to be.

- I love that are willing to be yourself around me, that you trust me enough to show me exactly who you are, and that you are more than a little bit excited to be able to tell me stories about your life for hours on end.

- I love that you are willing to listen to my long winded stories and ideas about life, as well. (It proves that you’re not merely self centered.)

- I love that you are open to new experiences, and that you are able to enjoy many of the things that other people enjoy. I also love that you are able to appreciate the things that other people enjoy, even if you don’t love them yourself.

- I love that you have so many different smiles that it would take me a lifetime to count them all.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

- I love that you have even more weird faces. So many, in fact, that several lifetimes would likely not suffice to count them all.

- I love how unspeakably beautiful you are. I wish that you could see yourself through my eyes when you’re feeling less than pretty, because then you’d know how silly it was to feel that way. I’ve never seen you look anything but breathtaking from head to toe.

- I love that you see me as a man.

- I love that you take your relationship with God seriously, that you take the time to thank him for each meal you eat, and that you are willing to give up things that you love to remind yourself of his love for you. These things all make me want to have a better relationship with God myself.

- I love that you allow me to question your beliefs without feeling threatened or angry, and that you are willing to discuss why we both believe what we believe. This is very extremely important to me, and I hope will allow us to grow as individuals and as a couple.

- I love that one of the main reason for some of our differences in political and religious beliefs is simply that you have a true desire to be compassionate and understanding towards others.

- The thing I love most about you is the way you look at life. It’s hard to even explain, but I’ll do my best. While some people look at life as a series of challenges (as I have in the past), you seem to look at life as an experience, to be breathed in and exhaled with a smile on your face. You are so overwhelmingly positive and upbeat, and you have obviously spent so much time looking for the little things in life that makes simply existing fun and interesting, that it comes easily to you. I envy this about you terribly, and if I can take one thing from my relationship with you, and really take it to heart it will be this way of thinking. And that’s why I knew... I knew after reading your 25 Things that you were somebody very special. You were somebody I had to know. You were somebody worthy of my love. Because only a girl who looked at life in such a wonderful way could have written that list the way you wrote it. Thank you for allowing me to experience such a beautiful outlook on life.
[NOTE: Filmmaker said that the thing that finally pushed him to ask me out was reading my 25 Things meme on Facebook, which contained mostly things that I had put on this blog during NaBloPoMo 2007]

- I love that when I am around you, I am a happier person. I am a smarter person. I am a kinder person. I am a cooler person. I am a more honest person. I love that you make me the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.

- I love that this list feels incomplete.


It's hard not to fall for a guy who says such pretty things.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

Is it love? Can you be in love after such a short period of time?

You tell me.


May you know that you're worth loving.

~A~



P.S. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.