I love you truly�not
It occurred to me the other night, just as I was trying to drift off to sleep, that an awful lot of men have told me �I love you�. A nice round dozen in fact, and five just since 9/11 (the modern equivalent of what were you doing when Kennedy was shot?).
How is it possible that, despite five generally acceptable mature men uttering those words with absolute sincerity, I live with two parakeets?
Oh � let me count the ways.
The first asked to see the menu so he could order the same main course he had ordered for half our lifetime spent together and apart, but still without the side dish of I want you.
The second searched the internet after his divorce, thinking he was still in love with the 21-year old he lived with thirty years before. Several visits across the country proved his torch was still lit, but mine had gone out long ago.
The third wooed with sincerest heartfelt promises of love foreverafter and a marriage proposal via thousands of emails, and hundreds of hours of calls while entertaining me with fanciful stories about his life, family, job, and home. And disappeared, without a trace, two years later. Facts have since proven the fanciful stories to be exactly that. No tragic deaths, no war hero, no movie star.
Still reeling from the charade, I couldn�t fend off the fourth who said I love you quickly, passionately, regularly, with promises and proclamations and moved into my life as if he had always been there. Three years we spent together until I found the other recipients of the same passion and promises and proclamations. I still wonder if he was cheating on them with me, or cheating on me with them.
And now number five. Another perfectly acceptable mature man with a well-documented career, an ex-wife from a long-lived marriage and children (all of whom I�ve met), sufficiently well-off to enjoy life and travel. Who started two years ago as a dinner and travel companion and who has, in recent months, graduated to I love you. And who, just last weekend, looked at his closets and declared �well, it certainly bodes well for our relationship that neither of us has a home big enough for two�.
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