How You Know It's True Love

Good afternoon, folks.

How's everybody doing today? Hopefully you are enjoying this b-e-a-utiful weather. It's truly the perfect fall day.

For today's blog entry, I would like to write about love. And I want to share with you some of the things I have learned about love over the past five and a half years.

Vincent and I, Graduation, May 2009

My boyfriend and I have been dating since May of 2009. Which was right before we both graduated from our high school, where we met. I hate to sound cliche and all, but we fell in love pretty quickly (even for 18-year-olds), and even started talking about getting married someday in our future. Five and a half years later, here we are, still crazy about each other. I will admit we've had rough times and doubts and all, but we pull through every time and come out stronger on the other side. He is the greatest guy you will ever know and meet, and I am beyond happy that he is all mine. (So back off, ladies).

I often don't even like to consider him just my boyfriend, but he is more so my best friend and my soulmate.

Vincent is my very first boyfriend and my very first love, and it brings me great joy to be able to say that he is also my ONLY boyfriend and my ONLY love. And always will be. How do I know this? I feel it in my heart, my mind, and most importantly, in my gut. Things like this, you just know. Ya know? It's just something that isn't a question in your mind, you just have this overwhelmingly good feeling about it, and you are confident and certain that this is the realest, truest thing you will ever have and experience.

For the first two years of our relationship we both lived in our respective homes, literally around the corner from one another. I could walk to his house and be there in less than 3 minutes. It was wonderful, and we saw each other every single day. The past three years, he went away to school (an hour and forty minutes from our hometown), and it was hard being apart. He would come home every winter break and summer vacation and we would make the most of the short amount of time we had together until he had to go back to school. I visited as much as I could, and he came home as much as he could. Now he is in Boston for graduate school, and I am still at home in Albany. I work every weekend and it's hard to get days off. He is so busy with school work, and I am so busy with work, that we can't find the time to visit or see one another. So we call, text, Skype all the time. But it's not the same. For some reason, his being away this time is even harder than before and it's certainly putting a lot of unneeded pressure on our relationship.

But we make it work. Because we love each other. A whole damn lot. And nothing can get in the way of that. No amount of miles can come between us.

I've gone into way much more detail than I wanted to, but you get the idea, yes? We're apart, but we make it work because we love each other very much. So he came home this past weekend and I urged him to do a couples' photoshoot with me. You know those engagement photo sessions that people do nowadays? Well, we're not officially engaged, but we're on our way there, and I wanted to do what I guess you could call a "pre-engagement photo session." Two of my very good neighbors are professional photographers and they do engagement sessions and weddings and family portraits, so I asked them if they wouldn't mind helping us out. We went downtown on Sunday and even though it was chilly and windy, we made the most of it, and had a lot of fun posing and getting some awesome shots.

One of my favorite shots from the session.

My point is, this photo shoot made me realize how much I really do love him, and how much I really do want to spend the rest of my life with him, start a family, be happy, etc. etc. etc. So my post for today, or my question for the day is this: how do you know it's true love?

Well, I'll tell you.

You feel it in your heart, mind, and gut. I mentioned this above already, but I need to reiterate, because it's so important and SO TRUE. When you have true love, you feel it in every fiber of your being. You feel good. About this other person, about yourself, about your relationship, about everything. It's so weird, but it just happens that way.

There are no words to describe it. No matter what you try and tell people about your significant other, they will never understand the love the two of you have. Ever. You can try and try to explain it, but there are no words to get your full point across. So if you are at a loss for words when talking about this person, or even talking to this person, then you're probably in love.

Every little thing becomes a big thing. Every small thing your S.O. does for you, or every small thing you do for him/her, feels so much bigger than it probably is. Making you breakfast is a huge deal. Doing a silly photo shoot with you is so much more important to you than you thought it would be - just the fact that he wants to do this with you means that he loves you a whole lot.

Love will get you through tough times. No matter what you are dealing with in life right now, if you've got somebody by your side, you've already got a head start. So ask them for help, and if it really is true love, they will be there for you through thick and thin.

He/She gets along with your family and friends. This is pretty important to some people. The fam's gotta love him, the friends have got to at least like him. Not that you need approval of this person by all these other people, but it would help you and your situation if you all got along.

He/She believes in equality between the two of you. It's all about balance. It's all about compromise. You can't agree on everything, but you've got to agree on most things. Or you can agree to disagree. But men and women should all be equal, in what they say and what they do. And if your S.O. believes you have every right he/she does, hold onto them.

You have some thing(s) in common. With Vince and I it's Game of Thrones, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the color red, and our taste in food. Having something in common helps with the equality thing, and the agreement and compromising thing. And that's really important.

You can spend time apart and not worry. You can't spend every waking minute with this person; you need your own time and space sometimes. But you know when you're apart that you won't miss them too much and that you and he/she will be faithful. And you can have your own separate lives, but still have one shared life as well.

So Vincent and I are apart in distance, but will forever be close in heart. That sounds super cliche, but I really don't care what you think. And hey! That's another thing - you don't care what others think. Maybe you're weird together, but who has the right to judge that?

That's all I've got for now, friends. Hope you enjoyed this post, learned a little, laughed a little, whatever other weird sort of emotion or reaction you may have experienced as you read this. Keep all of this in mind when looking for your Prince Charming or your whatever else. All of this comes from the bottom of my heart, and I mean it with all of my soul, because I love this guy so f#$*in' much. And I just don't want to hide it!

I love you, Vincent!

xoxo, Clare