At the time,I lived with a beautiful roommate.Flowers piled up at our door like snowdrifts,and the light on the answering machine always blinked in a panicky way,overloaded with messages from her admirers.Limousines purred outside,with dates waiting for her behind tinted windows.In my mind,love was something behind a tinted window,part apparition,part shadow,definitely unreachable.Whenever I spotted happy-looking couples,I’d wonder where they found love,and want to follow them home for the answer.
After a few years in the city I got my dream job—writing about weddings for a magazine called 7 Days。I had to find interesting engaged couples and write up their love stories.I got to ask total strangers the things I’d always wanted to know.
I found at least one sure answer to the question“How do you know it’s love?”You know when the everyday things surrounding you—the leaves,the shade of light in the sky,a bowl of strawberries—suddenly shimmer with a kind of unreality.
You know when the tiny details about another person,ones that are insignificant to most people,seem fascinating and incredible to you.One groom told me he loved everything about his future wife,from her handwriting to the way she scratched on their apartment door,like a cat when she came home.One bride said she fell in love with her fiance because“one night,a moth was flying around a light bulb,and he caught it and let it out the window.I said,‘That’s it.He’s the guy.’”You also know it’s love when you can’t stop talking to each other.Almost every couple I’ve ever interviewed said that on their first or second date,they talked for hours and hours.For some,falling in love is like walking into a soundproof confessional booth,a place where you can tell all.Finding love can be like discovering a gilded ballroom on the other side of your dingy apartment,and at the same time like finding a pair of great old blue jeans that are exactly your size and seem as if you’ve worn them forever.I can’t tell you how many women have told me they knew they were in love because they forgot to wear makeup around their boyfriend.Or because they fell at ease hanging around him in flannel pajamas.There’s some modern truth to Cinderella’s tale—it’s love when you’ve incredibly comfortable,then theshoe fits perfectly.