Love Camelion

I've gotten into watching The Bachelor this season.  I'm not sure why exactly.  I haven't really watched it before now.  
I like watching people trying to figure love out.  Throwing around terms and phrases such as, 

falling for, 

feeling deeply 

and love.

I don't know what makes anyone feel like they are falling in love.  I'm sure it's different for every single person.  

What I felt was fear.  Fear seems to be a motivator of mine.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not but when fear rears it's head I know something BIG is going on.  I wasn't scared to love Darren, that part was the easy part. It was being loved in return that I feared.   I feared that Darren would give up trying to love me.  I feared that perhaps something about me was not loveable.  It was the first time I had felt fear in relation to love.  
I have spent some time, probably more then necessary wondering if Darren is my soul mate.
As with anything else in this overwhelming world of knowledge, more then one definition or ideal of a soul mate exists. (way more then one actually)
I considered Darren being my soul mate in the sense that he seems to complete me.  That with a healthy dose of fear I had allowed myself to give him access to everything that I consider to be ME.
In my searching for a way to convey these thoughts that I've been having about love and marriage which were more then likely brought on by the impending "love holiday" I found this excerpt from:

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert.

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life,.."

These words resonated with me.  I realized that I felt no fear to be loved when I was with my ex-husband because I did not truly love him to begin with.  He simply served as a means to a beginning. I've spent a long time regretting and despising that time I wasted on him. If I were to accept the above soul mate ideal, I would thank him for bringing me to my own attention. Every person that comes and goes in my life is here to fulfill a role.  Maybe that was his. 

Maybe.

I've written it before, that Darren is my greatest love and now I believe it even more.  Without the understanding of certain things I never would have been capable of allowing this man to love me, completely. That is how I know that I love him.  And I do love him.  So very much.  Everybody plays a role and I'm glad that this is his.

In my searching, I also came across this.

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.  We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on
    permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

    The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in

hoping, even.  Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor

forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation,

but living in the present relationship and accepting it as t is now. Relationships must be like

islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now,


    within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and

abandoned by the tides. 

My oldest sister Kimberly read those words aloud during our wedding ceremony.  The words resonated with me then and they still do.  In fact I have them framed and hanging on a wall in my upstairs hallway.

This is my ideal of love. A constant changing evolving relationship.  Marriage simply implies that we promise to change along with our love.  To never allow it or ourselves to stand still for too long.  You have to remember to keep nudging it.  That's all love needs really, is a nudge, a reminder that it's wanted and so very very needed.

I think what I like about The Bachelor is that it sometimes catches someone becoming very vulnerable.  I like it when the giddiness is replaced with a sense of something bigger.  That if they could just raise the blinds just even a little bit more they might understand exactly what it is that they are feeling.

I like watching the show because it reminds me that from the very beginning love is never really what we think it's going to be.

And no matter how much you try to figure it out, by the time you think you almost have it, 

life changes

and so does the meaning of love.