According to Whitney (a character in one of my TV show scripts) there are many angles to this ‘love’ thing, especially when it is tied to a traditional relationship, like hetero-marriage, and all the activities usually leading two people to it.
Here is her take, as she journals before an interview about a book she wrote on marriage:
Whitney -
It feels different from how it felt before.
We've fit like puzzle pieces since day one, or technically, about day fifteen or so.
We talked about our dreams in a comfortable way, as in, 'you know, I'm going to be the best in the world one day. And it’s going to happen sooner than people think it should.' We would both say this to each other and believed it about ourselves and our places in the world.
Crazy thing is, we said this to each other in our first conversations and on our first dates.
First dates as in - the coffee meet up during my lunch hour, followed a few days later by sitting in a cafe one night passed the closing time, followed by just a couple of days after that seeing Planet of the Apes and walking to get ice cream during the most romantic night of my life.
It was our first week together that culminated into our first dates.
And we talked about the heavy stuff, all up front. The things people think are weird and that make them immediately run the other way. We'd stayed and talked some more.
Then we built our days around helping each other.
We made promises and even after my high and mighty posturing against them,I found that they felt easy to make when it was with my best friend.
We lived together because it was easier than not living together once we became 'us'.
We got married because being with each other the way we wanted to be was legally easier married than unmarried.
You can believe that the one you're with is the 'one', right up until everything starts feeling wrong. Funny how this feeling only seems to occur when any outside influence squeezes its way into your life.
Before then, things are clearer.
After the obligatory friend and family consensus, things get murky. This is exactly why I think love and marriage are two completely separate things and that marriage, as an arrangement, is the fraternal order's downfall and a trial to civilization on the whole...but I'll get to that later.
Anyway, the murkiness causes doubt and behavioral changes. Behavioral changes cause relationship changes and new expectations.
Or maybe those expectations were there all the time?
How's one to know?
Is anybody that honest?
Once you've done the things you convict another of doing, would you be?
Locking each other down with those expectations causes people to change, and not in a good way. People start to close up and grow in different directions and they don't water the love garden.
No, no.
Nothing but weeds and thorns and thistles.
Lots of folks take one look and just give up on it after a while. I think that’s because they look at each other after all of this and begin to see a different person than the one they knew. They wonder what happened and can't figure it all out fast enough to still care.
It's hard to know where to go from such a place.
You know you love the person across the room, but you don't feel you know them anymore.
You've changed. They've changed.
Your best friend, the person who made you believe in unconditional love when you never thought you ever would, is gone.
They don't defend you anymore because you let them down. You don't feel worth defending so you stop caring and go back to the belief that unconditional love is a farce.
You feel absolutely lost, and lonely, with the person that looks kinda like the love of your life sitting right next to you.
And you can't live in the past, but you can't try to figure things out without looking back to the beginning.
Maybe the answer to what's next is hiding in what's happened all along the way. You've got to try to figure it out because let's face it...what's left to lose?
More to come - I am sharing tidbits strategically (please understand, this is just how it’s done so that things aren’t ruined as they are being birthed).
Check back to stay in the loop on my characters and this TV show I’m determined to get produced!
~T