Originally Posted by Eddiebuckle

For most of my life I understood love to be an emotion. In recovery I have learned it is a verb - a conscious action. If we are honest about it, the emotion we feel early in a relationship isn't love, it's infatuation. It's about a mythical person and a mythical state of eternal bliss. That bliss fades as we get to know all of this person in whom we're invested, sometimes it grows into something bigger and better, but usually it fades.

I spent most of my life thinking that I would know my home when I found it. I went through several houses, and they never quite cut it, and I moved on. Love is like consciously choosing a dwelling and saying - this is where I live, this is where I will sink my roots. It's a scary thing because, who knows? That roof may leak, and the foundation is a bit out of square. People are like that - and it wasn't until I could accept and love me as a whole - including my personal frailties and defects, those things that always seem to need work at the most inconvenient times, that I learned to do that with the woman who stood by my side during the darkest time I've known. She's not perfect, but she is perfect for me, her heart is my home. I am one lucky man.