Recently, my best friend lost her husband in a tragic accident. I’ve known them as a couple for 17 years and they were truly, madly, deeply, for each other. It was a little tumultuous at times, but even an outsider could tell how much they loved, and took joy in, each other and their kids. They called what they had True Love.
This is not a post about them per se, just that my friend’s tragedy has had me thinking a bit more about what I would like for my own future.
When I was young, I was definitely going to go to college, get a fabulous job and then find True Love with some sort of Duke or Viscount or something (I wore out a boatload of Barbara Cartlands that I got free from the library when I was 11 and being a small-town, American girl, that stuff was romantic to me and not obnoxious). Then I got to college and got hooked into some fairly hardcore religious bullshit and thought I was going to meet a man and we would fall in True Love (with Jesus as our constant third, of course) but certainly not have sex, or even kiss, until our wedding night (at the time I tried to convince myself this was romantic and not creepy). When I finally started to acknowledge my doubts about this religious thinking, I decided that I was definitely going to meet someone that I could have premarital sex with, then we’d fall in True Love and marry and have a few babies and live happily ever after.
It took kind of a lot of years to sort through all that. To realize I had to figure myself out first, to accept the possibility that I might not meet someone, to learn to appreciate myself and enjoy myself (still learning, of course). I’m just now starting to realize what I like and what I want when I’m with men and it’s definitely not always the things that I thought I would. (Being tied up? Enjoyed as expected. Being spanked hard enough to leave bruises? Unexpected turn-on. See, I’m learning.) I’m currently sleeping with a few people I am very fond of. This has been a fantastically wonderful experience for me, and when I was first trying it out, I thought “Hmmm, maybe I’m not cut out for monogamy, maybe I just want to be completely my own and simply enjoy people here and there.” This idea certainly has merit, especially because I am more and more convinced that we can love many people, sexually and platonically, at once.
However, after my friend’s tragedy, and seeing other friends who had someone to turn to for comfort in the wake of it, I’m starting to think that what I really want is to simply be someone’s favorite and for them to be my favorite. There is something about being someone’s main squeeze that fulfills that Barbara Cartland fueled part of my heart. The part of my heart that my dad trained to believe compliments when they are given, to be accepted and respected as my due. (Not always easy, but he did his best to make me believe it). The part that wants someone to attend family holidays with and help me with things around the house. I no longer expect one person to be the end-all and be-all for me, but whatever the dynamic looks like (threesomes, other partners, etc., in addition to platonic friends.) I’d like to find someone where we are each other’s favorite. Each other’s first choice. While I may have eschewed my religious past, the part about love being a willful act as well as (sometimes instead of) a feeling, stuck.
So, what I think I’d like to do is to someday choose a person who also chooses me and to carry on with them in all sorts of excellent, smutty ways while also being able to introduce them to my family as someone significant.
I’m thinking that might be my True Love.
The trick, of course, is that you don’t just choose someone at random. Your attraction and feelings of compatibility have to be mutual. And, you may never find that person you want to be your favorite where they feel the same. Usually, I’m pretty OK with this. But when I want comfort, a shoulder to cry on that belongs to me, that’s when I most long for a primary companion.
True love was always something that doesn’t have a specific explanation. I think depends on you if you want to accept that partner to be true love. True love can be any where, you just need to open the eyes big.