This section shall be dedicated to the adventures that is love and dating in France.
Some of the romantic stories shall be anonymous for confidentiality reasons.
Love can be complicated at the best of times. Sometimes this is made more difficult by distance when there are two different countries in the mix. When I met my first partner, many people ooh'ed and ahh'ed over him being French and that he was moving to Australia to be together.
However, it is more complicated than romance and love. One of you has to give up your country, which also means giving up your family, friends, routines, and employment.
Love stories and tales of romance:
Melissa Riemer: Adventure, Glamour and Falling in Love with Louis
Ah, l'amour...
Un coup de foudre means love at first sight in English. In French, it translates literally to a flash of lightening.
Many doubt its existence. I believe that these people are the less unfortunate ones having never experienced it. I would never settle for anything less.
As the poet, John Keats said;
"Nothing is ever real until it is experienced"
I have felt so in love with someone that I felt as though I would not be able to live without them and to the point in which I honestly felt that I would die without them.
Personally, I would rather spend the rest of my life alone than be with someone who does not make my heart beat faster.
Every serious adult relationship, I have felt those clichéd butterflies. Years later and I'm still running to the door on hearing them arriving home. I have not experienced a honeymoon period as they call it because that is what happens when I get into a relationship.
I am usually single and rather content about it because it is the what I would prefer unless I do find someone that special. Therefore, I know that if I was to be "alone" for life, I would be ok. At least then, I would know that I had not simply settled.
Today, I feel that I have had enough romance and big gestures for a lifetime and I am contented if I had no more. I am luckier than most to have had the experiences that I have had. Luckier than most, especially as the romantic type.
"I would have preferred a short life with Larry than a long one without him".
From little gestures like notes and one of my most treasured objects was a post-it left on my jacket at work saying "Je t'aime" after leaving me lunch that I had forgotten at home, love letters (snail mail), stuffed animals, not buying my own flowers for over 2 years, a surprise seaplane over the Great Barrier Reef, handwritten notes left in obvious and not obvious places.
I am okay! Looking back, the intensity of the love was quite extreme. I only listed some but hence the title of my blog, "The Adventurous Life". My life has always been interessant for some reason or other. I am at the moment still in recovery from my last relationship because I am tired, lol. It's been maybe 18 months and whatever. I'm doing me.
It is more than passion. It is a cerebral connection as well as a physical one. There is a stark difference between lust and love. There is also a difference between love and the love at first sight type of love.
Love endures. The way I felt remained for years and I will always love them for what we had together.
Take Shakespeare for example in my favourite sonnet:
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of two minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare clearly experienced love of the highest intensity and the reason that this particular sonnet touches me so deeply is because it describes my own idea of love. It is not something that changes and if it does, perhaps it is not real love after all.
There may just be something very, how should we describe it... "unique" about love and dating the French.
I am perfectly contented being by myself. I am a terrible romantic and would much rather be alone than in an "average" relationship.
Due to my fortune in my previous relationships, I feel that I have experienced an awful amount of love. So much so that I am honestly as I am very happy. I am aware that a lot of people may never have the opportunities that I have had and I do appreciate my fortune. When you have the privilege to experience true and lasting romantic love, you do feel thankful for it and in my case, it makes me feel that I am not lacking in anything in life.