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The Only Kind of Love That Will Do


Some people dream of finding love. I've had love—I've had it in countless affairs and three impossibly large loves that rewrote the landscape of my heart. I've had more than my share of stolen glances across crowded rooms, whispered confessions in the dark, and connections that felt like coming home to a place I'd never been. I've known the intoxication of new love, the deep comfort of partnership, and the devastating beauty of loves that were never meant to last forever but changed me completely.

But through it all, one moment has always been missing: the grand declaration. Yes, I've had the proposal—the ring, the bended knee, the question asked. But in our world, proposals have become something we treat like starter marriages: temporary promises we make before we know better, practice runs for the real thing, placeholder commitments we're already half-planning to outgrow. 

The grand declaration—which a proposal should be—is something else entirely. It's when a person knows that no matter what comes in life, no matter what literally no matter what, they aren't letting go. It's the person who finally shows up with trembling hands and absolute certainty, who looks me in the eyes and says, "I love you. I can't imagine you with anyone else. I choose you for all of it—not just the good parts, not just until something better comes along, not just until we hit our first real obstacle. I choose you like my life depends on it." I've never had that. I've always been the one to declare my love first, to be the one who leaps without looking, who turns vulnerability into an art form. I've been the one who says "I love you" into the silence, hoping it lands somewhere soft.

I'm 44 this week, and birthdays have a way of crystallizing what we know but haven't yet had the courage to name. I've come to a clear, unshakeable conclusion. If there is to be another love of my life—whether it's with someone from my past who finally finds their voice, someone I'm currently caught in a current of possibility with, or a future love I have yet to meet—it will be a love that arrives with a declaration so profound it moves me from the place I'm in.

I've learned to be brave in love. I've mastered the art of showing up, of being the one who calls first, who suggests the weekend away, who isn't afraid to name what's happening between us. But now, it's time to be shown up for. To be the one pursued, claimed, chosen with the kind of fierce intention I've always brought to others. Nothing less will do.

This isn't about pride or playing games or holding some rigid expectation like a shield. It's not about keeping score or punishing past lovers for their hesitation. It's about a deep understanding of what my heart needs now, what it has earned through decades of generous loving. I've spent my life giving my love freely, openly, and first—pouring myself out like wine, trusting that it would be received as the gift it was meant to be.

The only love that can truly shake my world at this point is one that is an arrival, a moment of profound courage from someone else who has finally decided that I am worth the risk. It has to be a love that is unafraid to meet the love I've always been willing to give. It must be a love that doesn't just whisper sweet things in private but declares itself boldly: "I choose you. I want to build something with you. I can't live without you."

I want to be swept away by someone else's certainty for once. I want to be the one who gets to say yes to a love that has already made up its mind about me.

Perhaps it's a fairytale ending, but maybe it's the only kind of beginning that matters anymore.

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