Happily Ever After... from a novice cheerleader

I'm ever so happily married to someone who is just right for me. This brings me such joy that like a newly converted christian I have come to believe that everyone I know and love should eventually attain the same state, is on their way to it, or is at least searching for the partner to link up with and promise forever to. It's got to be the best way to live, since that's the way I live, and I always make the assumption that it's right for everyone. Maybe yes, maybe no, I rarely step outside of my own experience to consider whether it's right for everybody. What makes me happy must be good for everybody. So I always wish that my loved ones and chosen family will find someone like I have and live happily ever after.

When someone that I love enters a new relationship, I'm immediately assessing whether or not I think this is "the one" for them. If I just don't see it (and let's face it, if it's just a rampaging monkey-sex kind of connection and nothing more the chances of me seeing it are slim to none) then I think "Oh, this isn't really going to work out for you, I wish you could meet the 'right' person for you, and be as happy as I am!" When I'm introduced to a new good date, or budding relationship and I think that I myself would have chosen this person for my loved one I feel elated, because I immediately start to hope and emotionally invest in the kind of permanence that I wish for everyone.

I have never had a one night stand, only a series of deep and meaningful emotional relationships, some of which have lasted up to two hours. I tend to marry too quickly, apparently, since it took me three tries to find my real husband. All of the people who are afraid that legalizing Gay marriage is a threat to marriage itself should really focus more on people like me, because I think I'm far more a threat to traditional marriage with my two ex-husbands than any two women who have been together for twenty years or six months that want to exchange vows with each other.

So when I meet the new lover of a dear friend, and they just click; emanate that mutual admiration, fascination and respect for each other that rolls off of them like the smell of freshly baked muffins I get so excited. Vicariously I fall in love all over again, and it's the falling part of love that is the most intoxicating, the daily commitment that is permanent and monogamous has its ups and downs and isn't nearly as exciting. Deeply fulfilling and nutritious for sure, but not always ecstatic.

Inside I'm jumping up and down and giggling and screaming "This might be the one, the one for you! Oh please take me dress shopping with you, we could go on Say Yes to the Dress!" I'm filled with Joy that someone I love is finding and falling face-first into this cliche word of love, which is not cliche in the slightest when it's real and you're in it.

It happened for me yesterday. A good clue that one of your major life companions is entering this state is that they start to disappear from your own life, become a bit transparent at the edges, don't call quite so much. If you feel insecure as a rule this can be very threatening, because it can imitate abandonment or trigger fears that they are mad at you for some reason they haven't expressed. For seasoned love-junkies like me, it's easy to tell that nothing is being subtracted from your own friendship, it's more that the giddy fires of new love have been added to theirs.

I have been missing this one certain person a bit lately, because we went from daily texting and phone calls to the occasional facebook comments and quick "I adore you <3">

This is a new friendship for me, but I've told her that we're not like Sandy and Danny from Grease, that our connection is way more than Summer Lovin', we will be BFFs for always and forever and never lose or lessen our adoration, or at least I won't. Finding out that someone I love so much is (dare I say) falling in love with the most amazing person just thrills me beyond description. (which doesn't mean I won't use another hundred paragraphs in my attempt to describe it...) I got to meet her yesterday, and in that best friend/sister/mother/daughter kind of way I fell a little bit in love myself.

I have high standards for myself and my Lovies, and this woman exceeds all of them. She's beautiful and intelligent, super spiritual and creative, complete in her own life and not looking for someone to fill an emotional hole (as far as I can tell from one hour of coffee, I'm not Christine so I'm not a real psychic, simply presumptuously intuitive) and in my opinion just perfect for my Dear One. I am so excited I could just spin around until I'm dizzy.

This doesn't happen as often in regard to others as it did for me when I was dating. Ask me on a second date and I was pretty sure we were on our way to something real and profound, but then again I had far less self-esteem way back then and thought I needed someone else to complete me. Thank God I got off that ride and did a lot of soul searching and internal discovery before I met my perfect mate. If I hadn't I'd probably be married to a future ex-husband again and wondering why things never last. I come from a life where only one person I didn't give birth to actually stayed, so the quest for permanence is coded into me. I'm still guilty of trying to pick or predict permanence in relationships for the people I love, it's a gift or a curse but it's mine and that's just how I operate.

So today I'm skippy-hop-happy, and all night last night I knew that this would be the topic of the following morning write. Someone I love has connected with someone I find to be so right for them, and my universe is spinning a little faster and smoother on its axis. Ain't love grand? I'm deliberately leaving out names, because it's not my business to introduce this new relationship to the world, just to sit here and be thrilled and hope I will someday be a bridesmaid. I'm really over the moon though, to see someone I love and admire so very much be in the presence of another who brings out the best in her, to smell their new muffins and imagine that they too may have found the thing that makes every one of my own days so beautiful and grounded even in the midst of chaos or worry. Get me some pom-poms, I'm ready to do a cheer! Give me an A! Give me a J! (that's all I know about cheerleading, I was a stoner in high school and never went there.

I'm so lucky I get to share this.