Tag Archives: I love you

The Courage to Love

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Maybe I am a foolish dreamer but I believe love – real love – is very likely the greatest gift life offers us. I think if you are afforded the possibility of real romantic love you are, well, a fool if you allow things like a single tattoo (which I don’t have) or facial hair (which I do have) to be deal breakers. You are equally foolish if you let the size of a woman’s breasts or the length of her legs guide your decision making.

It seems to me many have a plethora of reasons, some conscious, some not so conscious, for avoiding real love. What is his or her schooling? Have they been to college? What did his or her parents do for a living? She or he has a child already? He or she has been married before? She or he is five feet tall? Six feet tall?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the human species is ineffably gifted at coming up with reasons to avoid real love. I remember many years ago going out with a woman for a brief time. We liked each other and all was going well and one evening over dinner she said, I’ve been meaning to ask, what sign are you? Not seeing the bear trap on the ground in front of me, I said, Libra. A look of unutterable horror came over her face. Oh Peter, she said, in a tone so troubled you’d have thought every one she knew just died, We don’t get along. Instantly realizing I was facing a mountain that called for oxygen tanks to summit, I said, What the hell we been doing up to now? She shook her head, put her fork down on the table and said, I should go. I agreed. She left. I finished my meal.

Now I know there are underlying reasons for why we run from or avoid the possibility of love. Nearly always these reasons are found in the soil of our histories. We’ve been wounded before, we’ve been betrayed before. We’ve turned our hearts loose before only to have them gutted. In some instances we were raised in ways that taught us we weren’t much worth loving. So, if you find yourself falling in love, or faced with the possibility of falling in love and being loved, just think, if you run, your history wins – again. Your history does not deserve that kind of decision making power. You do.

If You Need Me

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If you need me, I’ll be there, with kind arms waiting, no furrowed brow for you.

Daylight comes and daylight goes, dreams seem to do the same, but I tell you

If you need me, I’ll be there, bringing you a cup of tea sweetened with a smile

From me because you are you and that’s all you need to be

If you need me, I’ll be there.  In coming storms or in the thick of pain, during times

Of hunger and lost hopes and lives, I’ll be there, in your dreams, in your heart always

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the song of the morning birds, the early day sun glowing

Warmth into your heart, because I love you, you know that, I am there, you can hug me

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the quiet and in the loud, in the darkness and in the light

In the rhythm of your footsteps in the morning and in the night I am there always

If you need me, I’ll be there, because you are you and that’s all you need to be

In life and past it, I’ll be there, loving you, always, because you are you and I am me

Relationship Jail Cells

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Many years ago I wrote a script that went nowhere called It Was Your Heart I Wanted. The story was about a woman confronted with the possibility of entering a relationship but found herself fearfully hesitant because her last relationship had been such a brutal one. An all too common reason for hesitancy many have when facing the possibility of new love. And so, in a very real way, they are trapped in the jail cells of prior relationships. I called the piece It Was Your Heart I Wanted because I do believe most of us can say that and mean that when we enter into a relationship.

But there is another kind of relationship jail cell. The relationship we are are already in, we know are not happy, and yet we stay in them anyway. The love may be gone, if it was ever there, and the environment is toxic, but we stay. Blessedly, I am not in this situation and after nearly seven years of sobriety would disengage from a situation like this were I in one. But, believe me, I’ve been in toxic relationship jail cells before.

I know a few people who are in them now.

I know one extraordinary person who is an American History buff. I mean this is someone who really knows and loves American History. But their spouse stops them from any involvement with history clubs or other people who love history. I know another person who is in a relationship with someone they like but don’t love but figures the person is good to the kids so why not.

I level no harsh judgment towards anyone who is trapped by their history in a way that stops them from daring to love and daring to be loved. What I will say is this. All of us have the right to love and be loved, and no one’s history deserves so much say it stops them from experiencing the heart-and-soul wonder of a relationship that works gloriously, and believe me, there are relationships like this in the world. I know people who are in them.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll take the risk of loving and being loved. My history be damned. If the possibility of a deep-in-the-heart relationship is there, I don’t want to miss it, at least not because of my history.

LOVE YOU BROTHER

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Remember to say I love you to those you love. I don’t know what it is about those three often maligned and misused words, I love you, that makes them as special as they are, but I do believe that when they are meant, they should be said. Not only to the many who deserve to hear it, but by the many who deserve to say it.

My friend Frank died at 7:35 yesterday morning with the two he loved and who loved him the most by his side. Like many others, I loved Frank. And whenever I’d say, Love you Frank, he’d smile at me and say, Love you brother. And I knew he meant it. I can still hear his voice saying those words to me, Love you brother. He meant them too, all three of them.

The words I love you are remarkably hard for some of us to say. For still others, they are difficult to hear. Still others avoid the phrase because it is has been used as a tool for manipulation and, in some cases, cruel manipulation, in too many scenarios.

However, I think the only necessary guideline for saying it is honesty. Say it if you mean it. Your history, those who betrayed you, used the phrase to manipulate you in one way or another, denied your ever hearing the phrase, none of these people deserve so much control over you today that they stop you from saying it at all.

A woman I love very much said to me recently, “Peter, you love everybody.” Not true. Not by a long shot. Rest assured, there are people I don’t love and there I even people I dislike, some intensely. But what I do believe in is letting those you feel love for know it. While there is certainly such as thing as too much hate in the world, there is no such thing as too much love. However, there is such a thing as not enough love – and not enough expression of the love that is there.

The first game the Yankees played after Yankee captain Thurmon Munson’s tragic death in 1979 was in Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles catcher was Rick Dempsey, a former Yankee and back-up catcher for Munson. The Yankee manager was Billy Martin. Dempsey sent a note to Martin in the Yankee clubhouse before the game. In it he told Martin that he, like so many others, loved Thurman and he, like so many of us, did not always remember to tell people he loved that he loved them. And so, in this note, he told Martin that he loved him.

And so if you love people in your life, whether you love them as friends or more, tell them. Use the words I love you – all three of them. I would ask the few of you who might feel saying I love you is a wimpy thing to do why saying it is so hard for you to do? Were it an act of weakness, to say them, it ought to be easy, no?

Take care of yourselves in life. Love each other as best you can. And when you do, say so.

I am going to miss you terribly, Frank.

Love you brother.
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FALLING IN LOVE

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Falling in love is an experience many of us hope for, yet, when it happens, doubting and second-guessing begin in earnest. For many of us, wen it comes to falling in love, the ability to allow it to happen is fragile at best.

There all kinds of theories about what falling in love is. In an article in Discovery, Professor Arthur Aaron from State University of New York at Stonybrook says, falling in love is, in part, rooted to our innate desire for self-expansion. Reading that made me immediately check my waistline. You can’t too careful.

Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni, according to one article, believed falling in love “is a rapid process of destructuration-reorganization called the nascent state. In the nascent state, the individual becomes capable of merging with another person and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity. Hence the definition: falling in love is the nascent state of a collective movement formed of two people only.” Moreover, “In order to understand if someone is truly in love, the individual must be put to truth tests and, in order to find out if he or she is loved in return, the beloved is also put to reciprocal tests. The incandescent process of the nascent state through these tests gives way to certainty and produces a stable love relationship.”

Reading that made my hair hurt and my eyes glaze over. No offense, Mr. Alberoni.

I am not about to say I have the answer. But I can tell you what I do believe. I believe falling in love is an experience rooted in nature itself. It is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility. Moreover, over thinking and over analyzing has derailed more than one instance of true love. In fact, they play a large part in why so many of us get tangled up in doubt and second-guessing; we inflict the intellect on something that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the intellect.

Falling in love is a gift from nature itself, It is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. There is a good reason why feelings are feelings and thoughts are thoughts. They are not the same thing!

Doubting love, doubting that you are falling in love often comes from earlier wounds in life. Many if us have grown to be understandably afraid we will be wounded again. Sometimes we are still under the spell of earlier life messages that told us we were unworthy of anything wonderful in life. Messages that are, by the way, bullshit.

Falling in love is very much like experiencing the breathtaking glory of a sunset or sunrise; it is like the mystical majesty of early morning clouds lifting off the mountaintops; or the quaint delicacy of early morning dew on the front lawn, when every blade of grass glistens in the cool morning air. When you experience any of these wonders, there is no discernible gap between seeing it and experiencing it. It happens all at once. You don’t need thought to know it. You just need to be open to it. It is the same with love, with falling in love.

One final thought, falling in love can be very scary, particularly for the far too many of us who have been wounded in life. This is why I agree with Professor Aaron when he said, “(K)indness is the strongest indicator for a successful long-term relationship.”

Remember, kindness, like love, is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility either. Like love, kindness is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. That is why they go together, and why, if you are blessed enough to have discovered both, you have not just fallen in love, you are on your way to being in love, and that, my dear reader, is the greatest gift of them all.

There is a line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says, “God help the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” Women too.