What Is Love? Baby Don’t Hurt Me…
I met my high school boyfriend when I fell off a bus. Of course, I was mortified, when I turned around to whisper a joke to my friend Jane, missed a step, and went flying forward from the big yellow school bus that had transported my class to an annual end-of-the-year field trip at a water park.
I leveraged that story for years, partially to illustrate my own clumsiness in other situations that called for humiliation relief but partially as a romantic how-I-met-my-ex tale. Jeff and I weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend in the traditional high school sense: he never asked me out and I never said yes.
Throughout those three years we spent a great deal of time together. We were both friends with one another’s families and spent hours on the phone well past midnight, engaged in the kind of heart-to- heart that you can only have when you’re seventeen and huddled in your walk in closet, hoping your parents won’t hear you on the phone late at night.
Jeff said he loved me with regularity but I never said it back. Instead, I mistook his words as a sense of security – if he loved me, then I’d surely have his friendship forever. As he continued to profess his love for me, we labeled ourselves “best friends” and continued to date other people. Eventually, we had a typical emotional-teenager falling out and eventually lost touch.
In the seven years that have passed since Jeff and my friendship-slash-relationship ended I’ve had a serious of relationships, some more meaningful than others but I’ve yet to fall in love - in the traditional, textbook sense where boy and he loves her back.
I’ve yet to define my personal definition of what it means to be in love: if you love someone but they don’t love you, are you actually in love? What is the difference between being in love and merely pining away for someone who will never love you back? I’d love to hear your own experience with love - unrequited or otherwise. How do you know when you’re in love?
And in case this topic is a little heavy-handed for a Wednesday, please enjoy this video:
(I had no idea how creepy this was until I watched it just now…)
Reader Note: I want to thank all of you for your tremendous support of my posts here on Umm, Now What for the past five months. I really enjoy writing here and look forward to seeing your comments and responses every week. You might be used to seeing me here on Fridays, but I will be posting on Wednesdays from now on, so don’t forget to stop by! I’m sure I speak for the other writers here as well as myself when I thank you again for your continuous support and dedication to this blog.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Ah, l’amour. I think love is just what you feel. Sometimes the person may not love you back and it hurts like hell. But you can’t make what you feel go away. It’s just there, as heartbreaking as it may be.
Each relationship is unique in its journey towards love. With my ex of five years, we were both head over heels in love. It was that sort of “He’s both my best friend and boyfriend and he’s tremendously impacted who I am so deal with it” dynamic, but it surprisingly wasn’t overbearing. I think the reason we worked so well for as long as we did was our balance - to be a couple, grow and learn together, but also maintain our sense of individuality. Of course, after while, it all gets a little blended in.
In other instances, however, I’ve felt myself falling in love when the guy just wasn’t there. Case in pt, my latest relationship which was long distance. Everything about it was amazing, minus the physical space between us. I was willing to deal because I felt that strongly about our connection. He couldn’t. And so goes the tale of unrequited love.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
My definition of love is this…
Being that I am a little bit of a bitch and am also brutally honest, I know I love him when I don’t cringe when he says or does something stupid. I don’t comment, I don’t roll my eyes, I just smile because it doesn’t matter. It’s only happened twice, but is worth the wait.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I think it’s a different experience for everyone… but when your in love, you know it.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I have only been in love once and that was with my bf of 4 and a half years. I know it was love, bc even though our break up was a year and a half ago and even though I have a new guy, I feel that a little piece of my heart will always belong to him. And if something were to ever happen to him, I know it would crush me.
Though we couldn’t make it work together, I still wish him all the happiness in the world. That’s love, right?
April 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I have been pondering this question a lot recently. Can you love someone if they don’t love you back? I have tried to convince myself I just have an unrequited “crush”, but I know that I want him to be happy no matter what. I would do anything to support him, he prevents me from going out and looking for anything better and when I do date another guy I compare them to him.
I hope he finds happiness with another girl. Then I feel like I could let him go for good.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I only know the un-requited kind of love.
But, in my experience, you know you’re in love when the persons being with or not does not wholly define that love… when their choosing not to be with you does not diminish it… even though it hurts you.
Being “in love” however, must be totally adverse to this!
April 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Being in love is pretty wonderful. The first time my boyfriend said it, I couldn’t stop smiling, because it is the most surreal thing in the world to know someone feels that way about you, too.