“If love doesn’t suck, you’re not doing it right.”
“I’m going to quote you on that,” said my sister, laughing into the phone.
“Go ahead,” I replied. “But I’m serious. Really real love is all about inconvenience.”
Not that I know a whole lot about really real love, but I’m a shrewd observer. I know what I see. And if my sister’s boyfriend loves her, not only will he drive thirty minutes out of his way to run her errands or take her to church, he will do it in a blizzard, on bald tires, and with a choice swear word or two on his tongue. Because that’s what love is: irritatingly inconvenient.
I know StepBob loves my mom, because every time her four chaos-loving girls descend on their home, stripping him of his privacy, peace, and quiet, he thanks us for coming and invites us back again. Love is all about losing your sanity, bit by ever-loving bit.
I know I love Hal because just about everything he does has the potential to be annoying (Yeah, see that scar on my leg? Sneak attack!), but somehow, it’s totally adorable. Like when he insists on sleeping across my shins. Love is about sleeping in uncomfortable positions because the object of your affection looks too damn cozy to disturb.
I know my friend Angie loves me, because when I asked, “Is our friendship strong enough to ask you to help me with my corset?” she didn’t even flinch. Love is about seeing folks naked and being real nice about it.
Ari cooks me mom food for dinner. Sarah keeps her hopes up for me. Torrie has given me part ownership in her baby (having my own scares the shit out of me). Because love is about seeing someone’s shortcomings and picking up the slack. Goldner lets me choose the dessert (molten chocolate cake!) and always lets me have the last bite. Because love is about not always getting what you want, and pretending you didn’t want it anyway.
See? When you’re doing it right, love really does suck. Which is probably why we can never get enough of it.
Love you too. Especially when you bake me cookies.
And teach you about Jesus! Don’t forget that!
You are like Yoda.
Who loves you baby? Of course I do…and you know where I live if you need that same favor soon. he he
Well said!
I love this post!
I’m going to go and share it with everyone I know….inconveniently in the middle of their days!
“Love is about seeing folks naked and being real nice about it.” haha I love it!
I’m feeling unloved, and I’m the one who hooked you up with spanx (not my own, just recommended!) for skinny feeling at that wedding (was it a wedding? I know seeing an ex was involved).
Love is NOT buying donuts at 3am this Saturday.
Sigh, a lesson learned in my club-hopping days- true love is holding back her hair when you know you’d rather be on the dance floor with that cute guy. Sure it sucks, but when you need it, its priceless.
I concur, love does suck. What we do for our children, in the name of Love, sucks like no other and is beyond inconvenient. It is the things I do and have done for them at inconvenient times that they will remember the most. They know they can count on me.
I wouldn’t have it any other way!
wait, but i love you and we do enjoyable things like walk in the park and see movies. wait, i thought of inconvenience: sometimes we see “bewitched” or “history of violence” and wishing for those 2 hours back!
And don’t forget about Dr. Fishface J. Bear. he would be pissed.
Woody Allen said it a bit differently:
“My therapist asked me if I thought sex was dirty. I said “It IS if you’re doing it right!”
The Beast has blogged on this issue in the past – “The Apparent Man Shortage”, but being a man, naturally he put all the blame on women.
Still, you are correct – if a man loves you he will do whatever you require to keep you happy. If he is a real man he will even put your emotional/physical welfare above his convenience. If he doesn’t, he is not a man.
Great blog name, BTW. It’s a take on the infamous Gloria Steinem quote, right? The Beast never really saw the logic in that line anyway…
u r so lucky to have all the love around you and such nice friends.
Dear Fish…reminds me of a saying from the movie “Love Story.” “Love means never saying no to running errands and being inconvenienced.” Wait a minute…did I get that all wrong? Well actually I may have gotten it all wrong and all right!
Ciao bella…great post!
I think I love you. And that sucks.
Love is easy when its great sex, fun conversations, and giddyness. What true love is is hanging in there when its not easy, not fun, and not all about you. Nice post.
most of these (except for Hal sleeping across your shins) are about how other people show their love for you. but what about how YOU show your love for them?? huh? huh? very little self-sacrifice coming from you on this post!
i’m in a bitchy mood…sorry! haha
And yet I’ve never seen your boobs – can it be real love? Brooklyn bar guys seem to say no. So about my birthday present, I had at least two ideas…
Bravo on this one.
You are exactly right…
love is inconvenient, but that’s what makes it wonderfully surprising.
interesting…
i think it should life sucks. the truth is so what
often in life we focus on the wrong aspects.
every minute of the day we do things that someone might not want to. choosing which things are worth worrying about is key.
today it is raining, honestly i can not change the weather so it should not get another moment of thought.
in your examples about love what is key to me is that love gives us a REASON to do all those things. there is no reason why we can not do them today without _love_ but most would not.
to me the beauty of the world is how willing we are to change and adapt when around someone who is a match but how we are not willing to do that when we dont have a reason. in love we learn that there are some things not worth arguing about, maybe people do it for the wrong reason… a fear of angering someone over the joy of helping. in the end i dont really care for the reason, i care that we can do extraordinary things
love proves we can do this all time.
today without love i shall
Wow Fish — Love it. You rock!
I think that is when you really know that you love someone when you don’t mind doing stuff that for anyone else you would go “are you crazy”. This made me think of this line from Grey’s Anatomy — one of the characters was talking about changing relationships and being angry with her husband but she said that no matter what at the end of the day that he was still who she wanted to tell everything too — that is love.
Love your writing. Thank you!
Yes and no. You’re mainly right because doing a favour is only doing a favour when it is an inconvenience to the person that does it, but lets not loose sight of the fact that ‘love’ is not actually meant to be a constant chore. The occasional self-sacrifice goes a long way… PS love your writing.
awwww I f-ing love this! You’re so right. Love is so inconveniently perfect. Not to mention, it makes you pee with the door open and give the someone else the bigger slice. How annoying is that?!
Fish, I really love your writing, but I think that there’s always a limit to how much love should suck. Love IS about self-denial & self-sacrifice & all that good stuff, but if you’re continutally inconveniencing yourself for someone, that can be dangerous. Love shouldn’t necessarily be about always “picking up the slack” for a person’s shortcomings, but about simply realizing that they HAVE shortcomings…and loving them despite that fact.
I think that when you’re in “really real” love, you often don’t even realize that you’re being inconvenienced: you drive half an hour out of your way to see someone, but that doesn’t seem weird to you at all because you WANT to do it.
This post reminded me of a Hugh Prather quote that I really like:
“I don’t want to do it, but I want to do it FOR YOU…so I will do it.”
Thanks for the food for thought today.
“Because love is about seeing someone’s shortcomings and picking up the slack.”
I like that.
And by extension marriage is all that plus buying tampoons and farting in bed.
love is awesome ^_^
Ya, its easy to love Dr. GQ-Romantic but to walk around in public with Mr. Black-socks-with-sandals, while he farts and scratches and not leave him for dead on some deserted country road?
That’s really real love.
Aww…well put
I wasn’t sure where you were headed at first (“Love sucks” is certainly a well documented sentiment)….thanks for the surprising change of direction! And you’re right, love is all about being horribly inconvenienced and still feeling like the luckiest person alive.
Fish, don’t take this the wrong way, but I usually just read the comments to see what Mike ‘Subtenders’ has to say. I think you need to marry him; you two are a match made in internet heaven.
Beautiful post, honest and eloquent. Love really is an amazing and funny thing.
Hi Fish, have started reading your blog for quite a while now… I completely agree with you on this love thing… n must say, when someone goes a little bit or even A LOT out of the way for you… then they must love you.
I absolutely adore your writing style. I love writing too, and we happen to like the same topic – men and the confusion of relationship -, but I probably don’t write as beautiful as you do. I’m trying though!
I will wait for your next posts!
You couldn’t have said it better. I wish I could put the description into words the way you did.
I really liked reading this and I believe every word because me and my sweetie are just the same we will do anything for one another no matter what it is. Thanks for the great reading to start out my great day. I loved it.
Your a beautiful writer.
Right on target. One of my favorite posts yet.
Yes, love sucks big time. But how do I know if I’m this ticked because I love or because it’s no longer love?
I read this post a while back, and for some reason its still on the back of my mind. Definately one of my favourites.
Thanks for the witty fish insight!