Ah romance. Lots of things are romantic to me. However, I need more context with this question. Am I explaining what’s romantic at the beginning of a relationship when that whole honeymoon feeling is intense and almost anything your sweetie does for you seems like the greatest thing ever? Or am I describing romance now, after I’ve been with him for 25 years? Some things do overlap though, from year 1 to year 25. For example, Josh brought me flowers on our first date. Full disclosure, I had to go back to the journal entry I wrote after that date to remember if he did in fact buy me flowers. I couldn’t remember for sure. Flowers were a romantic gesture then and I still think they are now.
My journal entry from that day had me proclaiming that Josh was the man I was going to marry. After one date. It wasn’t just the flowers that did it though. That first date was just the first time we met in person. We had been communicating on the phone and through email prior to that–we’re an online dating success story.
Now though, 25 years later, while I think flowers are still a sweet gesture, romance to me is sitting next to him on the loveseat. Our spots in the living room are pretty defined. He sits on one end of the loveseat and I sit on the end of the couch closest to the loveseat. Both pieces of furniture being in an L position. We’re next to each other, but not quite. If I sit next to him on the same piece of furniture, it’s romantic to me. Not to our dogs though. One of them usually squeezes in the little bit of space between us.
When he cooks a nice dinner and we put a tablecloth and the nice drinking glasses on the table…that’s romantic. When he brings home my favorite drink from the grocery store, or the Reese cup ice cream because he knows that’s my favorite, all romantic. But really, like my post from yesterday, this kind of crosses into the area of love languages. Obviously mine is gift giving. So I love it when he buys flowers and brings me treats from the store. When we were going through our marriage prep program–a necessity for getting married in the Catholic church–we had to do a love language survey. His isn’t the same as mine, so these romantic gestures would not have the same effect on him as they do on me. That’s o.k. though. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s good to show your love in their love language more so than you’re own. All of that is romance.
I don’t know what a particularly good love language website is. Some of them will tell you your top love language but then make you subscribe or upgrade to find out where your other four languages rank. I highly recommend finding one though. It’s actually pretty interesting. Considering when we did this 13 years ago, my love language was indeed gift giving, but apparently, now it’s words of affirmation. Huh. Didn’t realize it had changed. But, we tend to do that. Change that is.
Anyway, long live romance! It’s important even if you’ve been in a relationship with someone for a long time. It never gets old.
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