Something about Love

An excerpt from the book – Oliver’s Story (sequel of the famous “Love Story” by Erich Segal, both are absolutely beautiful books)

I really like how “love” is perceived in this –

A little background- the hero (Oliver) is recounting. He has lost his wife (college sweetheart) – Jenny, whom he was totally and madly in love with. So much that he couldn’t move on for whole of 2 yrs after her death…and in some ways still misses her. He’s in another relationship right now with Marcie/Marce but somehow he’s not that happy and is trying to analyze why…

What the hell do I know of relationships? All I've ever been is married. And it doesn't seem appropriate to make comparisons with Jenny. I mean, I only know the two of us were very much in love. At the time, of course, I wasn't analytical. I didn't scrutinize my feelings through a psychiatric microscope. And I can't articulate precisely why with Jenny I was so supremely happy.

Yet the funny thing is Jen and I had so much less in common. She was passionately unimpressed by sports. When I watched football she would read a book across the room.

I taught her how to swim.

I never did succeed in teaching her to drive.

But what the hell — is being man and wife some kind of educational experience?

You bet your ass it is.

But not in swimming, driving or in reading maps. Or even — as I recently had tried to recreate the situation — in teaching someone how to light a stove.

It means you learn about yourself from constant dialogue with one another. Establishing new circuits in the satellite transmitting your emotions.

Jenny would have nightmares and would wake me up. In those days, before we knew how sick she was, she'd ask me, genuinely scared, 'If I can't have a baby, Oliver — would you still feel the same?'

Which didn't prompt a knee-jerk reassurance on my part. Instead, it opened up a whole new complex of emotions that I hadn't known were there. Yes, Jen, it would upset my ego not to have a baby born of you, the person that I love.

This didn't alter our relationship. Instead, her honest qualm provoking such an honest question made me realize that I wasn't such a hero. That I wasn't really ready to face childlessness with great maturity and big bravado. I told her I would need some help from her. And then we knew ourselves a whole lot better, thanks to our admissions of self-doubt.

And we were closer.

'Jesus, Oliver, you didn't bullshit.'

'Did the unheroic truth upset you, Jenny?'

'No, I'm glad.'

'How come?'

'Because I know you never bullshit, Oliver.'

Marce and I don't have that kind of conversation yet. I mean, she tells me when she's down and when she's nervous. And that she worries sometimes when she's on the road that I might find a new 'diversion'. Actually, that feeling's mutual. Yet strangely, when we talk we say the proper words, but they trip out too easily upon the tongue.

Maybe that's because I have exaggerated expectations. I'm impatient. People who have had a happy marriage know exactly what they need. And lack. But it's unfair to make precipitous demands of someone who has never had a . . . friend . . . that she could trust.

Still, I'm hoping someday she will need me more. That she will maybe even wake me up and ask me something like:

'If I can't have a baby, would you feel the same?'

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Beautiful, isn’t it? Simple and Beautiful!!

I wish people wouldn't force their loved ones into being them, but rather appreciate the differences and love each other FOR it.

Cheers!