reckless love

I've never been accused of being one of those people who is afraid of the L-O-V-E word. Granted I only say it to my girlfriends and have only said it with any real meaning and consistency to one man (boy)... but still. I love my friends, my parents, my brother, our dog Cooper, my new Louboutins. Recently I had someone tell me I'm an "I love you" whore. Which has got me thinking, am I too reckless with the word love?

It's like that movie Maid of Honor with Patrick Dempsey. He can tell everyone and everything on earth that he loves them but he can't say it to the person he truly is in love with. Therein lies the distinction for me: there is a difference between "I love you" and "I'm in love with you." The latter being much more heavy. I'm not in love with my girlfriends but I do love them. You never know what the day will bring you so it's important to express that love! I don't want to diminish the word and it's true meaning between two people in love, but I also don't want to be afraid to use it. Just like any good relationship, I can't imagine my life without my ladies. And calling them "lover" is just fun so if you think its weird that is just tough titty.

But what is love really? (I had to just erase the word actually for fear of using "love actually" and then having to go on a tangent about how much I LOVE that movie. It is love.) In my family, if you say you love something tangible my aunt Karrie will then go, "if you love it so much why don't you marry it?!" (Maturity is optional.) I'm beginning to subscribe to the very unromantic idea that the person you marry is more of a matter of timing than feeling. When you're ready for marriage, you'll marry the person you happen to be with at that time. If we played that related-terms game and someone said love, my association word would probably not be marriage. Not because they aren't associated. But because there is so much more to it than marriage. I think you're selling love short if you think straight to marriage.

I recently had lunch with an ex who is in town on leave. My favorite ex boyfriend. We were at a dive bar, eating tacos (me) and fish n' chips (him) talking easily and laughing frequently. He made a comment about how we happened at the wrong time in our lives. I couldn't agree more. We were both unhappy in our own ways and it ended because he decided to make a few poor choices and I decided to hold him accountable for said decisions. And really, if I'm being honest with myself, we were over before it ended...we just didn't know it yet. We're too alike. At lunch, talking about his current state of love, we starting discussing how we hate to talk about our feelings. I said to him, "that's one thing you and I did well...not talking about how we felt." His comment back to me was, "why discuss something you're feeling so strongly? Why does it need to be said?" Good question (idiot). Well, because people are dense and even if you're bursting with a feeling, the person with you may not catch on. We never said a word to each other about how we felt. Maybe that was the real reason it ended.

I love that we're still friends because at one time, I thought I did actually love him. For me, it's important to stay friends with my ex-boyfriends so that maybe one day, I can say "I love you" (the not in-love type) as a friend.