I've decided that being in love is like being drunk: you act stupidly, you are blind to your flaws and the flaws of your "other," you say things you wouldn't normally say, do things you wouldn't normally do, think you are invincible... All until "BANG!" you get your heart broken and the hangover you get from love is much worse than the worst whiskey-drunk hangover. You can't take two ibuprofen and drink a gallon of water to get over heart-sickness. It doesn't last a day and then magically disappear. No doctor can shove an IV in your arm and take away the symptoms. You are pretty much fucked.
The man and I (after 3+ years of togetherness) finally hit the "love" stage and I am not dealing with it very well. I am not a very emotionally expressive person, it wasn't the way I was raised. I think I was better not knowing and just assuming that the emotion was there and that was enough. Until...alas...I got drunk and decided that the man (in the event of one of our deaths) should know how I "feel." I was drunk, invincible, said things I wouldn't normally say, did things I wouldn't normally do...and as a result I am stuck with being in the "love" zone indefinitely.
Luckily, neither the man nor I verbalize our feelings very often (hence the 3+ years before the "L bomb" was dropped) so I don't need to worry about things being said with any kind of frequency. Unfortunately, this also means that I am rarely prepared for the outburst of emotion. The first time the man said "it," he was met with silence because I was caught off guard and didn't know what to say. Eventually, I figured out the desired response and was able to reiterate what he had said. Still, like being drunk, I am not very good at being "in love." I think my love-o-meter is busted.
