No Choice Love

William Blake

What most people call loving consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear, I’ve seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I think it’s just the opposite. Beatrice wasn’t picked out, Juliet wasn’t picked out. You don’t pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.

Julio Cortazar

Up to a certain point in my life, I tried to manage my romantic impulses. I acted on curiosity or physical attraction but I avoided falling head over heels in love — until I was forty years old. As fate would have it, I met a young woman quite unexpectedly who was the “lightning bolt that split my bones,” as Cortazar puts it. The choice was made for me by forces beyond my control. I was thrown headlong into a deeper life, a life that I tried my best to manage in spite of all my insecurities and fixed ideas. I felt exposed and vulnerable.

Now, I feel safe, but it took years of sailing through the inevitable storms and high seas of a real relationship. There were times when I was hanging on by my fingernails. I see now that I didn’t believe real loyalty and caring was possible. I had gathered proof of that belief over…