The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. –Nat King Cole, Nature Boy

I don’t care what anyone says, there is only one perfect feeling in the world: having someone love you. I have heard people say that life isn’t like the movies, that a love like that couldn’t possibly exist. I have heard things like, “I’m a romantic, sure. But not in the way you’re thinking; it’s not like the movies.” I’ve also heard that the best love story ever written was the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. 

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind: If a love like Scarlett and Rhett didn’t exist, they wouldn’t make movies based on the books written about it. Maybe these movies are made as a reminder of the way that life should be and that while you may not have a roommate like Hugh Jackman in Someone Like You (also based on a book), who falls in love with your absolute jillion neuroses because you’re just perfect despite all of that, there is someone out there for crazy girls like me who like to write. Because spoiler alert, stranger things have happened. (I don’t know if any of you have scooped out last week’s People Magazine or not, but stranger things have happened.) I also know that as far as the Fifty Shades comment well, I’m not even going to touch that one. Let me just say this: I’m not a fan. No offense to Twilight fanfiction writers the world over. 

One of my dearest friends once said to me, “As long as I’ve known you, you have been looking for the ultimate romance,” and while this is probably true, I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I found mine early and while I had to kiss a lot of frogs to get there, I never went through long periods of loneliness. While I certainly went through my phases of fast forwarding through ER episodes just to see the scenes where George Clooney painfully pines for Julianna Margulies, I was only truly brokenhearted maybe once or twice. Primarily because I discovered the rejuvenating effects alcohol has on the brain (a lot of things are fuzzy but it’s worth it) and lived vicariously through romantic comedies. (Some great ones I would recommend: It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give, When Harry Met Sally, and Payback. I realize that last one isn’t a romantic comedy but it’s a love story in its own right. Mel Gibson gets all twisted because his wife plays him and steals his money. Then she overdoses and he has the double duty of getting back his wife’s killer/aka the man who sold her garbage drugs and reclaiming his prize from an old robbery. It’s a great movie (also based on a book). I highly recommend you watch it.) 

But in all honesty, I’ve never been through long, lonely periods of time where I’ve had no one. I mean, they may not have been what I would deem as the loves of my life, but they certainly helped pass the time. 

My heart hurts for those people who, as of yet, have never felt that feeling of true love. I cannot imagine being alone all the time because I’m just not one of those people. I can’t be alone. Well, that’s not necessarily true; I can, just not for a long time. I get too antsy and anxious. My stomach does this weird flip flop and I just bounce around from activity to activity until it’s light out. Drinking helps but it doesn’t always work.

The course of true love never did run smooth. -William Shakespeare 

I remember once, a long time before I was married, I was casually seeing someone who was casually seeing someone else. (Let me just tell you something: I hate that word “casual” so much. Regardless of whatever sort of relationship it is, it’s like you don’t care enough about the other person for it to be considered anything beyond casual. It’s like Casual Friday up in here: jeans, a tee shirt and flip flops because that shit is casual. No, I don’t care. I hate it.) Whatever, anyway, I was honestly okay with it at the time because for a while, I wasn’t really interested in a commitment. 

But one night, we met up for drinks and naturally one thing led to another. I worked out religiously back then and I had these great, toned legs. He rubbed my thigh under the table and I knew where we were headed after that. One more drink, which I downed in three sips because I was nervous. Check, please. Kiss at the stoplight.

It wasn’t love but I wasn’t alone. I told myself I was still a good person, that the reality is, once you lose your virginity, it’s all downhill from there. The whole “sex for love” thing goes right out your booty call’s third floor window. And after all I had been through, at the time in my life, I told myself I had more than earned the right to be wild. Pretty, wild, and sensitive. A tortured musician with a penchant for expensive heels and brown eyed men. Not much has changed, I guess. 

But after he left and I got over all the residual bitterness (because really, he couldn’t have stayed a few hours? No one has the patience to cuddle anymore! It’s the saddest thing in the world.), I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed and stared at the clock, the digital minutes passing by so slowly. It was just me and my expensive, meaningless lingerie. And while I was telling myself that I wasn’t ready for a commitment, that I wasn’t yet ready to allow another man total control over my life, I thought: There is something to be said about love. There is something so comforting in the closeness, a safety in the warm body next to you; a relief in the line of sweat that develops when your bodies lie together for a long period of time. 

I was always so skeptical about this whole nonsense idea about that “one true love”, something that aforementioned man used to always tell me he was waiting for. (Which, excuse me for my candor, but I always found to be a bit insulting. I mean, this man and I, we were never going anywhere but way to rub it in my face…) Sometimes I would lie alone in my twin bed with the Care Bear comforter and think, but who determines that you only get one? Aren’t they all able to offer something useful? Something that you can use on the next one?

True love cannot be found where it does not exist. Nor can it be denied where it does. -Torquato Tasso

I know that I am always formulating these really awful, bitter diatribes about how terrible the multitude of men in my life have been and I just want to say something, okay? The truth is that a lot of them weren’t so terrible. A few of them were actually pretty great guys, just not for me.

I am grown enough to admit that I like to be catered to. I like attention, I like being treated like a lady, and I like knowing that my needs take priority over my male counterpart’s. I am a small, delicate person and I like being treated as such. And in a lot of my previous relationships, it seemed like I was the one doing all the work and the catering. I feel like it goes without saying, but I ain’t about that life, friends. 

I have this male friend who has been with his girl for actual years. They have some children together and relatively loose plans to get married. Throughout their years together, they have had a multitude of problems that spread from rabid insecurity to a lack of trust within the relationship. 

I hear these issues and I sit with them. Listen, I am an absolute advocate for keeping families together but sometimes you just can’t. You sometimes just have to realize that your time would be better spent elsewhere; that fighting to save something that was never going to work means fighting a losing battle. That absolutely, two happy, healthy, separated parents are better than two parents who are miserable and at each other’s throats incessantly. 

“But,” he’ll tell me, “I love her,” and I know that sometimes, you can’t just walk away from that.

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld  

I have another friend who was sort of in love with two men. It was something that was continually burdening her, something that she will probably always feel guilty about. She was an honest person and hiding her feelings was taking a physical toll on her. It seemed like she couldn’t live without either one of them, she told me, but it was clear to her with feelings like that, she needed to break it off with both of them. She said to me one day, "Do you know how sometimes you are absolutely certain about something? And then they say something or do something or you just wake up one day and it's all changed?" Indeed, I knew exactly what she meant.

On the one hand was her boyfriend, the individual she deemed “perfect” for her, the man with far more pros than cons. He was genuine, honest, and with him, she didn’t have to be insecure about his behavior when she wasn’t around. He was an upstanding gentleman who didn’t have the time for childish games like cheating and lying. If he said something, he meant it. And because of all these things, she knew that she never had to doubt him.

They had fun together, primarily because he was always planning random, exciting dates for the two of them. This brand of adorable kept her momentarily satisfied because he was incessantly attempting to keep things interesting. One time, she told me, he promised to take her to a different place every night so they could watch the sunset together. And as far as I know, until the end, he followed through with that promise. (Cue the goddamn swoon, right?)

He was sweet and wholesome, had a great respect for fidelity, and made an attempt to include her in every aspect of his life. I remember one day she said to me, “he absolutely worships me; it’s so fucking cute.”

But while she was obviously enjoying all the positive attention, there was still something missing. It was a good, loving relationship but she still had a void that this man was unable to fill.

Which brings me to the other hand: her ex-boyfriend. In my mind, I’m sort of imagining a Christian Troy brand of man with perfect skin, a well-tailored suit, and a line for every conversation. He was handsome, but he knew it. He was charming, did this thing where he kissed you on the cheek when he met you, which we all found adorable. So charming, in fact, that it was almost an act to overcompensate for how terribly he treated her. And while I could sit here and fill actual pages about how less great of a man he was than the other guy, that’s not the issue here.

She knew (and still knows) that he’s wrong for her. She knows, perfectly well, that in reality, he has nothing to offer her but chronic anxiety, stress induced stomach aches, and really passionate love making on the off chance he takes the time out of his crazy life to see her. 

She’s an intelligent woman, one of my favorite people in the world, and I won’t sit here and pretend like she’s a victim I’m advocating for. She knows he’s a piece of shit. She knows he’s wrong for her. From the beginning, she has always been honest with herself about all of this.

“But Kathleen,” she closes her blue eyes and lets her long lashes dust her cheeks, “I love the absolute shit out of him.”

Moral of the Crazy: The truth is that I know so many people who have dealt with this exact problem. Sometimes you’re in love with more than one person. Sometimes you stay with your significant other for any plethora of wrong reasons: money, stability, comfort, and children. Or sometimes, it’s because you just really fucking love them and although you know better than anyone that it’s toxic and won’t work out, you can’t bear to imagine life without them. 

Or sometimes, you’re on that incessant search for your “one true love”, like my ex-whatever-he-was. Maybe you’re desperately looking for something that you’ve been told doesn’t exist but you know that’s just because you haven’t found it yet. Want to hear the saddest part about that story? That man I spoke of earlier? The one who was just so distracted by the inability to find that “one true love”? Well, he found it. Married her. Got divorced two years later.

I know another woman who is married, has been for nearly half her life. Said marriage, however, dissolved shortly after the marriage license was signed and now they both live these weird, separate lives. What is even eerier, I think, is that these two people really love each other. On some twisted level, they’re soulmates. It’s like they were aligned in the stars and all the other people, they just seem to come and go.

I don’t know about that “one true love”. Sure, I’m on the wrong side of twenty-five but I’ve hardly lived. The way I feel today, I would say I’ve found it. I wake up every day comforted by the fact that a good man loves me, even on days when I’m not loveable. I know that the love we have is true but as for everyone else, well, I can’t speak to that. 

And while I have all the faith in the world in this relationship I’m in, I can’t say that I don’t worry about the day when he’ll wake up and realize I’m a crazy person. But what I will say is that if this thing doesn’t work out, if it turns out that one day I’m alone, everyone after my husband will be a disappointment. I will never be happier than I am today. Because in my life, even when it’s bad, it’s good. 

And that’s true love. 

True love stories never have endings. -Richard Bach