I got divorced on Valentines Day. And don't worry, the irony wasn't lost on me even as a fresh-faced 20-year-old, I saw the wry humor in receiving my divorce papers on a day recognized for celebrating romantic love in all its guises.
You see, I'd fallen in love with the ideal of falling in love, and for me, that was enough. He was my knight in shining armor who was going to carry me off into the sunset on his white steed. The problem was that nobody had told me that's only the beginning of the story. not the end. After the sun has set and a new day dawns, real life smacks you in the face like a wet fish, and I was too young and too naive to want to be smacked with a wet fish.
My knight was everything a young girl dreams of. He was handsome, hunky, worldly, wealthy and much older than me. Where my previous dates had taken me to the drive-in, he would take me to the cinema, when previous dates took me to the local diner for cheap Italian, he would wine and dine me at expensive restaurants, when an unexpected gift from one of my ex-beaus was a 6-pack to share, he would send me a dozen roses or a bottle of French champagne.
So how could such a blissful romance not go the distance, you ask? Because that was all it was - a blissful romance. And romance on its own does not equal love, well, not enduring love, anyhow. Sure, love without romance can lose some of its luster and still endure, but romance without love simply won't cut it.
Our romance lacked what I call the 4Cs of love (like the diamond!): commitment, companionship, courage and above all, communication. It seems absolutely silly to say in hindsight, but I simply didn't know this man, so it was impossible for me to be committed to him or our short-lived marriage, to have to courage to go the distance, to seek his companionship as a friend as well as a lover or to learn how to communicate with him.
When we went out to dinner, which we did frequently, I would watch couples at other tables chatting, laughing or flirting together and wonder to myself what on earth a man and a woman could talk about. I realize now that I envied the camaraderie many of them seemed to share, while we sat in deathly silence waiting for our meals to arrive so we would have something to do. Now don't get me wrong - I'm a chatterbox - in fact, I could probably hold a conversation buried under wet cement, but I didn't know how to talk to this man. I had no idea of his hopes and dreams, his ambitions, his likes and dislikes because for me he was symbolic of what I yearned for - true love - but he wasn't the real thing. I'd fallen for a cardboard cutout, just as he'd fallen for a life-sized Barbie doll.
Neither of us were to blame, yet we are both responsible because I believe his ideals of what a marriage should be about were no less vacuous or superficial than mine. After all, it takes two to tango, and we both tangoed very well. But once the dancing was over, so was the marriage.
Real love isn't simply about a dozen red roses or a heart-shaped box of chocolates, real love is about so much more it's almost impossible to put into words, yet wordsmiths persist in trying. And the kind of love that forges a real marriage is a truly unique and wondrous experience. I know now it's about truly caring as much for the happiness and welfare of your partner as it is for your own. I know that real love gives us the strength to lighten the load by dividing it and the added intensity of pure joy by sharing it.
Aristotle, the father of Greek philosophy said, "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." It encompasses all the dreams, ideals and values two people cherish.
I know what real love is now because I've experienced it every day for the past 25 years. And each Valentine's Day I think about the buff-colored envelope I received on that day 30 years ago and think about it. Not with remorse or sadness, but as a life lesson on the complexities of romance and love and how a knight in shining armor captured my heart for one brief moment in time.
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