Is This Love?

So, here’s a little story about how we realized we were up in love. It wasn’t the quickest venture, nor was it expected. It crept up on us at every step and caught us off guard.

For a few months, we had been dating, but we hadn’t talked much about our relationship. This left us in a bit of a gray area where neither of us were sure where we were in our relationship. A couple things stopped us from actually talking about our relationship — we were either too distracted by how much we were enjoying each other’s company, or too nervous to bring it up because of the stifling fear of scaring off the other.

One day, I decided that I liked this woman enough to want to pursue a relationship and wanted to understand how she felt. I built up my courage and just flat out asked her where she thought we were in our relationship. My leap of faith paid off. She was really enjoying everything that we were doing and how she felt when she was with me. Perfect! We were on the same page and felt similarly about each other. It ended up being so much easier than I anticipated, but the end result was just as worthwhile. I now had one amazing girlfriend.

We started talking more about our relationship and how neither of us realized just how quickly we had fallen for each other. We went from strangers at work, to friends, to steadily dating; each step seamlessly compounded and created something that we were both extraordinarily comfortable with. But neither of us made the realization in the moment! I supposed that because neither of us had been in such a comfortable relationship before, the utter bliss was too much for us to focus on anything else. (Even now, thinking back to the early part of our relationship makes my heart race.)

A few more months go by and a vacation I had long since planed was rapidly approaching. I kept trying to think of ways that I would be able to afford to bring her with me, but between our schedules and finances at the time, it just wasn’t feasible. This was… saddening, to say the least. It would be the first time since we starting dating that I would go for more than a couple days without seeing her. Of course, she was being supportive in helping me get everything situated, but as we were talking, she confided how worried she was about my safety during the trip. This must have been the moment that I realized the hole I jumped in with her was deeper than I thought.

Before I left for my trip, I realized that I couldn’t leave without making another confession to her. It was unlikely that anything tragic would happen to me during the trip, but I couldn’t leave without at least letting her know just how much I cared for her. If anything did happen, I didn’t want her to wonder, I wanted her to know.

Little did I know, though, that “I love you” only meant the beginning.