Love.

What is it?

Hmm... I was going to do a poem here, but decided at the last minute (a few seconds ago!) that I'm not a poet. I'm a writer, yes, but not a poet. I'll leave the poetry to those people who know how to do it.

But let me continue my little expedition into love.

I used to believe I was in love in the past, but now I know that they were just preparing me for what love is really like. It's like... I was being weaned into it by mild episodes of love that didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of what love really is.

I don't know what love is.

All I know is how I feel, and for the first time in my life, the feelings I have fit comfortably into the concept of marriage.

I used to believe that I would never get married, that an outdated religious ceremony wasn't for me. I felt that I didn't need a piece of paper to tell everyone that I loved a woman. However... everything's different now. I'm in love with a woman, and the concept of marriage is something that entices me. I've learnt about non-religious marriages (or whatever they are called) with the creation of your own vows, and all that kind of thing, and it's something that I've been thinking about.

Don't get me wrong... you know as well as I do that I've only known this woman for 6 weeks now. I'm not talking about marrying her right now, or even in the near future. It's not like that at all. What I'm talking about here is my feelings, and how they relate to the concept of marriage. It's something that is new to me, but I've been inspired to think about it because I'm in a love that I've never had before.

I guess I should talk about that. Love. I've had it before. Twice. However, my love on both occasions was never really reciprocated... I was in love with them, and they weren't in love with me. Oh, and then there's been an occasion when a woman declared her love for me, but I didn't feel the same way towards her. They really weren't very positive relationships...

For the first time in my life, I am in love with a woman who is in love with me.

The connection we feel for each other, the feelings that we inspire in each other, the way we feel knowing the other is there... this is love.

We've both decided that we want to spend the rest of our lives with each other. Up until a few days ago, that was as far as that went - a declaration of lifelong love, so to speak. However, I was thinking about that, and related it to marriage. My biggest objection to marriage was the hypocrisy of religions, and the knowledge that relationships can change as time goes by, and the stress of marriage can make a bad relationship even worse - it's better to have an easy separation as friends than a divorce as enemies.

But my mind has been changed. I'm so convinced that I'm going to be with this woman for the rest of my life that the thought of a non-religious marriage is very attractive.

I raised it with her during this past week, and she said, "I'm glad you raised that, as I've been thinking about it too..."

The result of that conversation was that if things are the same (or better) between us in a couple of years, then we're going to get married.

An exciting concept for an exciting time!