Never say *I’m in love with you* to your boyfriend on the day your husband kills himself

I sometimes get emails from lovely ladies asking for advice. I’m a little bemused by these emails because I am the poster child for doing everything wrong. Especially when it comes to relationships.

Here are a few of my transgressions with Duckfish

1. I slept with him on the first date
2. He practically stayed over every night from the second date onward
3. I embarked on a relationship just weeks after I left my marriage
4. I moved in with him after only four months

But by far the most inappropriate thing I ever did was tell Duckfish ten days after we met, on the day my husband killed himself, that I was in love with him.

Looking back, I can make the excuse that I was in shock and didn’t know what I was doing, but all I knew in that moment was that life was impermanent and everything could end in a heartbeat. There was no time to lose, there was no reason to pretend any longer. Sex and death. Connection in the face of disconnection. Love is all that matters.

Way to go Katie if you want to scare someone off. Not only does he have to deal with a broken, traumatised snivelling wreck, but now you’re declaring your love for him far too soon. Why would any man stick around for that kind of craziness?

His response in this surreal moment was not what I was expecting (if I was even expecting anything). He merely smiled and said “That makes me happy, baby.” After that we just ordered another glass of wine and talked about the more pressing issues of police, coroners, and cleaning the stains off the carpet.

You can’t actually ruin a relationship by taking things too fast. As a woman, you get to decide how much and when. A man, if he is into you, will go as fast or as slowly as you want. If he is interested, he’ll be willing to wait, or willing to make love to you twice a day for as long as he is physically capable.

Duckfish was slightly twitchy about the “L” word and took a while to feel comfortable telling me. I didn’t mind. If he didn’t love me, if we weren’t equal on an emotional level, then I would have known and he wouldn’t have been the right guy for me. Either a guy meets you where you are or you dump him and move on the next one. Life is too short to wait for the perfect moment or to have rules that say you can’t say what you feel before he says it first.

Curiously, Duckfish is more likely to say “I’m loving you, baby,” than “I love you.” I really like this. It makes love an action that takes place in the here and now. In our culture, we see the declaration of “I love you” as some sort of relationship milestone that moves us towards commitment and marriage. It is like we have to acquire the state of love. “I’m loving you” means that right here, right now, my heart is overflowing with love for you. There are no promises, no strings, no need for reciprocation, it is a statement of fact that cannot be questioned. If I’m loving you then no response is necessary. It is pure giving without searching for or needing anything in return.

He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never leaned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city.

And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainly that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning ~ Paulo Coellho, The Alchemist

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