Just Love

"Why do you love me?"

I'd asked this question countless of times before, but never seemed to understand the answer.  The answer was always different, yet it was never solid and never was reason enough for me.  Things like, "because you're beautiful" or "because you're a great mother" or the infamous "because you love me."  They all seemed obvious.  Still not good enough reasons to me.  The reason for my disbelief was given in his answer this time.

"I don't know."

At first I didn't know how to respond.  I could have been offended.  But I wasn't.  Then he continued.

"Probably for the same reason you love me."

Suddenly it made sense why I kept asking the question.  I was feigning humility, wishing to know the answer not just to understand him, but to understand myself.  I needed ideas to come up with my own reasons for loving him.

"I don't know either."

We sat in silence then, waiting for the other to respond.  Perhaps we were both afraid that this meant it wasn't love.  But what is love anyway?

We'd spent nights previously discussing our love for each other when I had asked this question before.  We'd tell each other all the positive things we could see in each other, yet nothing really seemed to give us the reason to be in love.  After all, those positive things were characteristics in other people too.  What was so special about this person.  I thought for a moment.

Love doesn't make sense.  Love has no reasons.  I could never explain this to myself because there was no explanation.  Love is just love.

Now I felt a smile creep up onto my face.  How many times had I heard love defined in this way?  "Love knows no reason." or "Love is blind."  Of course it is.

After some silence, we both laughed it off.

I have always been a romantic.  I expected to be "in love" someday in a way that "made my heart soar."  I wanted to "fall head-over-heels in love" and "be swept off my feet" whenever he entered a room, or some such cliches about love.  Then I met him and loved him and felt comfortable marrying him, but it wasn't this magical blast of light that I had been expecting.  So I doubted it.  I didn't trust it.  I didn't believe in it.

Now I do.

Because love... is just love.