Hanging up the phone with Darin tonight, I just laid on my bed and sighed for a minute. The thought of getting married in a little over two months really struck me as so exciting and thrilling that I just couldn't stand it. I am just so nuts about that guy! I enjoy our time spent chatting on the phone, and am so ready to do that in person. (Or even just spend a few hours sitting around watching TV. Ahh, a relationship luxury that is to come. Haha!)
We are so in the stages still of little butterflies over everything. There's so much new territory with one another in our relationship, having only just met a bit over a year ago. It's so hard to imagine a time where we will be used to each other. Right now I feel like when we're married, I will wake up every morning shocked that there is someone else in my room! Is there really a time where that feels normal?
I just read a really interesting bit from C.S. Lewis that I think sheds some light on this topic of the slowing down of the crazy stages of love:
"People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on 'being in love' forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time…. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy."
Should we really be afraid of those sparks dimming just a little bit, and turning into a steady fire in the fireplace rather than an explosion? Is there not some comfort and pleasure in a routine walk around the block or spending breakfast reading the newspaper?
I loved C.S. Lewis' comparison of moving to a place you once visited on vacation. If you fell in love with Paris over a week trip and decided to relocate there permanently, of course the Eiffel Tower would seem more commonplace in your line of sight as you did your daily business. The bustling fun of the Champs-Élysées would not invigorate you as much as it did the first time. But no one would imagine talking you out of moving to Paris just because the novelty would wear off. They'd talk about the joys of becoming a regular cafe patron, a fluent French speaker, an appreciator of fashion or food or art, or whatever you like.
So why do people see marriage as the death of fun and excitement? It's the same thing, making a permanent choice to reside with what you delight in -- although instead of a city, it's a person. It's okay to grow used to waking up and seeing that someone still there, and bearing through normal life with them.
My plan is to embrace and ride out all the early excitement and passionate fun of marrying Darin; in no way do I want to talk myself out of that in favor of what is inevitable. It will be a blast while it happens naturally! And after that, we can practice what it's like to cultivate love rather than let it carry us like a raging rapid. I will be as proud and excited as can be for us to become old farts together, and have our usual coffee times and fold our laundry on Saturdays. I wouldn't trade a love like that for 80 years of crazy exciting passion; it'd probably take a new guy every year for that to be remotely possible. Never in a billion years! You have to be the world's biggest dope to trade anything for Darin. No one else could be as much fun to make up horrible future Clinton baby names with, dance like a goober with at weddings, invent recipes with, drink beer with, lay out at the pool with, or go bowling with, ever in your life.
Cheers to sealing the deal and letting true love grow!
Love, Lara
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