I am tremendously lucky in my life. I’ve had some amazing loves. I’ve been passionately kissed under fireworks and under stars, I’ve been the center of somebody’s world before, and I’ve felt the smile of my lover like the sun in the sky. If I was never loved again in my life, I think the amount of love I’ve felt and given is probably more than many get to experience in their lives.

I am phenomenally fortunate.

Years ago, a boy broke my heart, and I thought I’d never love again. I told my friends I’d suffer heartbreak every day for the rest of my life for just one more day of the bliss we’d had before the breakup.

Through another relationship, through lovers and fun and a solid chunk of time being single – I genuinely believed perhaps that feeling was forever in my past. It was almost a relief, because it meant the feeling of losing it was in the past as well.

And when I met Judd, it wasn’t love at first sight. I didn’t meet him and have a lightening bolt to my heart, I didn’t think he was “The One” or start applying all sorts of potential to him without regard to who he actually was.

I just sensed an equal who I could connect with. And with time, with moments of effortless perfection and many moments of thoughtful, deliberate work, that connection deepened and deepened.

But then there’s so much more.

There are butterflies, and passionate kisses, and mind-blowing sex, and those sorts of moments when you’re alone together just enjoying the silence and your stupid romantic brain starts making up pictures of your imagined future life together. 

There are those moments when it’s early in the relationship and you’re not ready to say I love you, but you secretly want them to know, so you trace the words into their skin absentmindedly, like a secret message.

Sometimes there are goosebumps on your skin when they kiss your neck because it’s so good you can barely handle it.

There are disagreements where you wonder if it could all be over, but then you look at one another and you resolve that you want to work it out because it’s worth it. Because “us” is something different than just them or just you, it’s this bigger concept that makes each of you so much more.

There are moments when you need, and you seek shelter and kindness and the tenderness that you can trust to see your deepest vulnerabilities.

There are moments when you are the brave one, the strong one, while the other has their fears, their pain, and you make it better.

There are late night cooking experiments, filled with laughter and pleasure in trying to make something good together.

There are challenges you don’t expect, and blissful Sundays you count on.

There’s baggage to unpack, and heartaches to soothe, and insecurities that threaten the security of togetherness. There are moments when you take the other for granted and it takes a couple days before you realize what an ass you were and have to apologize.

There is potential for the deepest, hardest, most devastating falls if trust is broken, if love is lost, if one person comes to a point of not feeling mutually.

But it’s worth it. The bliss of it all is absolutely and completely worth it.

It’s been nearly a year and a half since our first date, and honestly, every day is better.

It wasn’t a formula I was expecting, either in person or situation. I didn’t set out to fall in love with him – in fact, I’d been skeptical of the possibility all along.

But it happened. I can’t even reach the feeling of my past bliss or my past heartbreak — I can’t even compare them. They are utterly different experiences, but the same.

And every day I think to myself how fortunate I am for this experience, and for this man I get to share this experience with.

And often he reminds me how fortunate he is.

I love it. I love that I’m always trying to be better, to try to match how awesome he is to me. I love that it’s mutual.

We are so lucky.

Everybody should be this lucky.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Relevant: A Valentine 2013

“Die Summe unseres Lebens sind die Stunden, in denen wir liebten.” -Wilhelm Busch