shades of love

How deep does love have to be for it to count? To matter. To be enough for two people. To last. I have been thinking about this for several days now. What really is love. Is it a deep concerned caring? Yes. Is it a strong emotional pull for someone? Yes. What if it is dependent on what someone does for you? If he demonstrates his love by jumping over a million hoops, then does my decision to keep him, or to succomb to him constituates love?

But here is the issue. I talk to people and the love they describes sounds like every day love - like I love my new shoes. Or like I love curling up with a good science fiction book on a Sunday with nothing else to do. Like I love Outback Steakhouse, or watching a good basketball game. And it depressed me - don't they want real love?

When I talk about love, I am speaking about intimacy. About that deep seeded spiritual bond, developed from overwhelming infatuation, mind stimulation and unbelievable physical satisfaction. That - can't breathe without him, my mind is blown away- type of love. Not that it lasts forever. Because its not supposed to. But that deep searing, scorching love makes this whole relationship thing worth it, right? Isn't that why you see couples break up and come back together? because that experience was so rare and so confounding that they try to rekindle it, hold on to it, even just come close to it.

What happens when love becomes - functional. I have been here. My husband and I, when we were dating, plunged into that high, all consuming, insatiable love thing. When we finally came up for air, life smacked us dead in the face. Actually sucked the spirit out of us. So, something so incredible was followed by a "lust drought" for lack of a better term. The nonstop intimacy became replaced with the mundane aspect of life, fading into functionality, squeezing in somewhere between dinner dishes and early mornign sunrise.

Gone was the creativity, the experimentation, the all inclusive desire. For a longwhile. And, although we loved each other, we didn't feel in love. My husband walked away. And, after awhile, my heart let him go.

But, the thing about that burning, drenching lustful love is that it leaves residue. An unextinguishable longing to taste it one mo gain. And so we come back to marriage, come back to the attempt to rekindle the spark, to be kind and gentle and loving to one another. To fall in love again.

There must be different shades of love. There is no other answer. And, if so, what shade do most relationships reside? Does everyone have that deep mindblowing thing, and then settle into something a little less dangerous, a little more routine, but th glue ios the memory and the attempt to respark it? Or do some couples begin at functionality. At perfunctorily polite, politically correct, financially compaitble? I imagine these relationships have a different rhythm, maybe the hot fire thing isn't necessary to bond. Maybe the reliability of continuity is enough to be satisfying.

When talking to others, I have decided to listen more to their description of love, their desire of love. I can't ascertain whether one is in love, until I know thier definition of love. And I wish love to those whom I care about, even if it is not a love that can satisfy my needs, I pray that it can completely satiate their personal needs.

But where do you go when the love you start out with begins at the middle mark? What happens to relationship then...