Let's talk about love

Blimey.

I think it is possible to feel something SIMILAR - but you can't take away your greater experience and such....

It's not once in a lifetime.

I mean, depends on circumstances, but doesn't have to be.

KC, since you like music, you might appreciate this song:



Writers: Cahn/van Heusen
Love is lovelier, the second time around
Just as wonderful, with both feet on the ground
It's that second time you hear your love song sung
Makes you think perhaps that love, like youth, is wasted on the young
Love's more comfortable the second time you fall
Like a friendly home the second time you call
Who can say, what brought us to this miracle we've found
There are those who'd bet
Love comes but once - and yet
I'm oh so glad we met
The second time around

I'm not sure I ever want to be as freaked out as I was the first time I fell in love. What I do like is that rush of the beginning of a new love. There are moments in a 'mature' relationship that are like that wild rush, but I've never found them to be quite as heady. I feel positively tall when I first fall in love. Being in love is lovely, but I don't feel tall.

Ah, hell, I'd love to feel the way about someting the way I felt about certain ladies (well, not very lady-like, for actually) way back when -- but I only felt that way because I was too stupid to know differently.

I feel very deeply for my woman now, but it's not the same kind of thing, thank God.




I've also been thinking lately that when we look back with nostalgia, it's because we are looking back and seeing a time and self that wasn't burdened with the same worries as we have now. Thing is, that self was burdened by totally different concerns that we've worked past, and now we don't tend to see them.

Or sumthin.

I don't know Soz and Dlowan, I just know I haven't ever felt anything to even compare with that first one. Maybe you can't get that same feeling again, but I guess it's possible that although you don't feel the same thing, you can feel something as good, only different. Maybe even better, because you can appreciate it more when you have been in love before.

I like the way you put that ehbeth. Feeling tall.

Letty, thanks for the song. Is that called "Second time around?"

Yep, KC--"The Second Time Around". The version I like the best is by FAS....heh heh, the very one who sang that song about New York. Guess Francis sorta knew what he was talkin' about.

Thanks, I will have to check that out.

Here's another general question about love. Do you think that at a certain point you can become too cynical and/or jaded to feel that euphoric kind of love? Or is it just a simple matter of letting your guard down?

Hmm. I was just going to say (before seeing your latest post) that the first time around I was 18, the second time around I was 21 and it was just like the first time, but more so. (That's the one I'm still with.)

I was going to posit that youth might have something to do with the intensity. But I know people who have been absolutely swept away at much older ages than you or I. I think a willingness to let your guard down is a big part of it, yeah.

Interesting point, Patiodog. Yes, you do tend to focus on the good times, and I'm not saying that when I was in love there weren't some horrible side-effects (like turning into a complete bag of quivering **** when it started to end), but I can remember certain times almost like it was yesterday and I do remember the way I felt was pretty damn euphoric.

Soz, that youth theory is what I was going to bring into it too. I don't know if you can get the same intensity of feeling when you're older. I guess it's possible, but when you're young your whole outlook is different. You are much more innocent and naive, which I think is a part of what makes it feel so amazing to be in love. Although the people you know might have very strong feelings, I don't think you can match that young love ever again.

There's a manic-ness with the first time that's not always pleasant. Feeling out-of-control is too scary to go through over and over again. But the excitement of being in love, especially when you're loved back, never dulls. When my husband and I first got together, a woman I worked with said that she watched me literally running down the street after work, to get to the train, to get to my new man. Now, I don't remember actually running but know that I was moving pretty damn fast because I could not WAIT to get to this man. It was exciting and thrilling. I'll never forget that.

Counting the times I'd been in love, this was the fifth time around. I was 38 years old.

Missed patiodog...

I've been waiting to see some sort of study (I'm sure it's out there) about the biochemical whatevers of nostalgia. I don't trust it. I did an experiment when the sozlet was a baby and I was sleepless and stir-crazy and cooped up and at the end of my rope. I marked a certain time -- sitting on the couch with her sleeping on my lap, watching stupid TV, because I didn't have the remote control and if I stirred one centimeter she would wake up and the horror would resume -- in my memory, to come back to later.

I did recently (coming across the note to my future self), and it was with a rush of nostalgia. It was completely irrational -- I remembered all of the gory details -- but there ya go.

I think that most ANYTHING, given passage of time, is remembered with nostalgia. That it's not just a matter of emphasizing the good -- that even if there is no particular good, it gets all rosy-tinged.

See? eoe was 38. (That's a sweet story. :-) )

I do think it is more and less likely (more likely if you're younger), but that doesn't mean it's impossible, by any means.

The times I've fallen in "love" were always at very unstable junctures in my life -- little money, no steady job, lots of booze and drugs -- so that may color my perceptions of the process a bit. But it was all so new and so unlikely to leave permanent scars that the whole process was just fun. I was involved in a couple of triangles that were just interesting, you know? Now the stakes are too high, and the same thing would be agonizing. But when you're a kid and nothing is for keeps -- well, then you can play the game with gusto. At least, that's what it was about for me, and that's what I mean about the differences in worries. Then, I wasn't worried about bills and my future and blah blah blah, and it was fun, but I wouldn't trade what I've got now to go back to it.

Maybe most things get rosy tinged, but not everything. I remember when I was having nightly panic attacks when I lived in Orlando because I thought I was going to lose my job and have nowhere to turn, and I still remember that as being horrible. I can look back and realize that it wasn't really that dire a situation, but still, I remember how horrible it was.

Maybe you're right, but I will choose to cherish my feelings when I think about the first time I heard her whisper that she loved me, or the time we said goodbye for the summer and she had a tear in her eye and she was laughing and saying "I'm not crying! I have something in my eye!" Oh my god, I'm even getting a little choked up just writing this!

Patiodog, you make a good point. When you're young you almost never think of the consequences of your actions, and when you're older, you almost always do. That's why it's so hard to even have a chance when you get older.

there is indeed a huge difference created by both age, and maturity, and inertia. As our lives progress, our grasp of reality acretes into an amalgam of preferences, understandings, sensitivities, and criteria, affecting the nature of others to be admitted into that 'inner circle'. And these are most stringent upon that one very, special person to be invited into that closest of relationships, the 'partnership'.

As we age the 'mist' we create around that mythical person deepens.
What we must do is abandon these criteria, and look with fresh eyes on a world full of like souls who have also gone beyond that eagerness of youth, but still seek to be and have 'specialness' with another.

A chance at what, kicky? True love? There's always the chance. You'll never match that first love, that's true, so why try? The newness of it is unmatchable. But every day that you awaken, there's the chance of something wonderful and magical happening. Corny but true. You've got to stay open to the possibility. That's all.