Love is when you can’t stop thinking about her. Love is when you find yourselves holding hands and neither remembers initiating the contact. Love is when she comes over to your place and remembers a carton of milk for breakfast cereal. Love is when you find yourself having a great time clothes shopping, just because you’re together. Love is when you get some great news or some sad news and the first person you feel like calling is her. Love is when you feel all ill at ease and moody because circumstances prevent you from seeing her for a day or two. Love is when you remember her birthday. Even though you had to write a note to yourself and stick it on the dashboard of your car.
Love is when you run back into a burning building to save her favorite stuffed toy that she had since childhood. Love is when she cooks you a cake and feeds your cat while you are away for the weekend with the lads. Love is when you wake up in the middle of the night to find her staring at you and she says, “I am so lucky to have found you”. Love is when she spends two hours talking to your mother and is still sane afterwards. Love is when she grips your arm during the scary bits of the movie. Love is when you walk through the park at night and she says “I feel so safe with you”. Love is when you see something she’d like and buy it on the spur of the moment, just because you know she’ll smile when you give it to her.
Love is when you find yourself hanging out her underwear on the clothesline and you are happy to do it. Love is when you sign both yours and her name at the bottom of your Christmas cards. Love is when you cook her tea and she irons your business shirt for you. Love is when you put her sexual fulfillment before yours. Love is when she wears something sexy just to turn you on. Love is when the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and rather than complaining she starts kissing you instead. Love is when you carry ALL the shopping bags for her.
Love is when she bumps her funny bone and asks you to kiss it better. Love is when you cancel the basketball match with the lads, because she wants you at her parent’s dinner party. Love is when she lets you watch the XFiles and you sit through Melrose Place. Love is when she says “My period hasn’t come yet” and you manage to play it cool and not panic. Love is when she laughs at your jokes despite the fact that she’s already heard them all before. Love is when you unlock and open the passenger door for her before getting into the car yourself.
Love is when you jokingly say, “Honey, I’m home”, and it actually feels right. Love is when you spend all Sunday morning in bed together. Love is when a sexy woman walks past and you don’t even notice. Love is when the same sexy woman asks you to rub suntan oil onto her body and you don’t because your girl wouldn’t approve. Love is when, for no reason, you see mundane things that have always been there and find them beautiful. Love is when you walk along the footpath curb, like you did when you were a kid, and laugh for no reason.
Love is when you visit your parents and actually hug your father, because your girl has opened the sensitive side in you. Love is when you race each other to the train stop, but then you let her on first. Love is when you lift her in your arms and carry her to bed. Love is when she calls you at the office just to hear your voice. Love is when she lets you order olives and anchovies on the pizza. Love is when you sit up all night talking about your innermost doubts and fears and she actually listens and understands. Love is when you share the same glass, because it saves on the washing up.
Love is when she sits in your lap at parties even though there are plenty of other seats. Love is when she gives up smoking for you. Love is when you go halves in buying a bed. Love is when she lets you take a photo of her and you end up using the whole film. Love is when you write her poetry and use the word “forever”. Love is when your friends buy you his and her bath towels, and always refer to you as “those two”.
Love is when you sell your car just to buy a plane ticket, and chase her across the world to say, “I’m sorry”. Love is when you smell her scent on your clothes and it floods your mind with happy memories. Love is when, after you’ve broken up, you compare everyone else to her and find Love is when, after you’ve broken up, you cry after looking at photos of her. Love is when you contemplate driving your car off a cliff because you can’t stand life without her.