A Love story...
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Was re-reading an old book I had about true love.....
the author was a newspaper columnist who would frequently ask his readers to share their love stories with him for this book(sales proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity)
....stories that were not one that they had read or heard, but one that they had lived...
As time went by Stories came in from friends and loved ones, stories on first love, old love, ten second passing loves, lifetime loves...nasty love, crazy love,gooey love, bluebird and rainbow love...you get the idea, all sorts...
this book has made me laugh, made me cry and given me hope so I will share some of those stories here with you all and perhaps....perhaps....
....you would like to share a true love story here as well...
First off, a nice little short one....
Here is the entire text of a love letter intercepted by a second-grade schoolteacher, passed on to a parent who passed it on to me:
Dear Billy, if you dont say you love me and walk to the bus top with me I will kill myself and beet you up.I love you and wan to marry you soon. Suzy.
The little girl was eight at the time. The parent showed me the letter when the girl was twenty four. At a rehearsal dinner. The day before Suzy married Billy. During the service I shared the letter with the guests and in her vows had Suzy repeat after me:"I Suzy, promise you,Billy, never to kill myself or beat you up."
If the marriage lasts as long as her love, and her love is as large as the laughter in the ceremony, the odds are good for happy ever after.
-a minister, Belleevue,WA as told to R.F. -
what is the moral of this story?
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My dad paints my mom's toenails. I was there when he started doing it. The whole family was at a resort down in Oregon to celebrate my folks' fortieth wedding anniversary. My mom has always been a beauty queen ever since she won a pageant when she was in high school. She really is pretty and has very nice hands and feet, too. She likes makeup and facials and perfume and she always has had her fingernails and toenails painted. But when we were sitting out by the pool, I noticed for the first time that her toenails weren't done.. I asked her why and she said she was getting too old and stiff to get down that far and she thought it was foolish to go to a beauty parlour to get it done.
My father is a big,gruff man's man who has coached football all his life. I was really surprised when he spoke up and told my mon he would be glad to paint her toenails for her. When she asked hime why he would want to do a thing like that, he said, "It's because I love you and want you to feel beautiful as long as you live."
Five years later he's still doing her toes for her.
Myrna, Seattle WA. -
no specific moral for me to tell you...these are just stories to share...every person takes out something different from what they experience, read, hear learn...Originally posted by dragg:what is the moral of this story? -
sometimes, the little things people do, show how much they love their spouse
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the moral of tis story: marry her if u dun wanna get beat up!Originally posted by dragg:what is the moral of this story? 
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Y'know, I wish to say something. Falling in love was easier in the past. That was because things were much simpler and well, much less complicated. A good man meets a good woman and there are good feelings between the two of them so, ok, they get hitched, everyone's happy.
These days, the situation is very different. A good man meets a good woman, and then one or both would have commitmentphobic issues or something from the past is still haunting them or they will start applying harsh measures to see if they're really compatible, and then they start wondering how each other will be like decades down the road, then various fears and character flaws surface, yada-yada-yada. Some couples grapple with money issues, power-play issues, lifestyle habits issues, preferred leisure issues, in-laws issues, childcare and parenting issues, etc etc. Love gets asphyxiated amidst all the clutter and phobias and what-not.
It's no longer a man looking for a woman who can cook, clean, and have good morals and a woman looking for a man who has a decent job and can feed the family and give them a roof over their heads. These days, we scrutinise each other and demand more and more...
I still like love and life to be simple and uncomplicated, much like how a few of the folks I admire live their lives. -
Originally posted by tare:the moral of tis story: marry her if u dun wanna get beat up! Tare, you crack me up!
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What about this?
What strikes me is that they couldn't see each other again,
and wrote letters to each other all through their whole lives.
Abelard and Heloise
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The story of Peter Abelard and his wife Heloise is one of the saddest love stories of Western history. Abelard, who was born in 1079 AD, came to Paris as a young man and taught classes at the new school there. He was a very good teacher, and used logical methods to try to answer difficult questions about the nature of God. Students came from all over Europe to hear him lecture.
Abelard lived in a rented room in a house owned by a churchman named Fulbert. He fell in love with Fulbert's niece, Heloise (HELL-oh-ees). When she got pregnant, he wanted to marry her. At first she refused, because married men could not be churchmen, and so they could not be teachers. He was such a good teacher, she didn't want him to have to stop. But if she were not married before the baby came, she would be disgraced herself. So Abelard insisted on marrying her. Finally they got married secretly.
But when Fulbert found out that Heloise and Abelard were married, he hired men to follow Abelard and beat him up. Abelard almost died. He retired to a monastery, and didn't teach anymore, and never saw Heloise anymore either. But Heloise never married anyone else, and Abelard and Heloise wrote letters to each other all through their whole lives. Eventually Abelard founded a convent, and Heloise became the abbess of the convent. Abelard died in 1142 AD, and Heloise in 1164. -
There's a real-life account of a Korean couple in the Feb issue of Reader's Digest that shows how they had to wait for years before they could be reunited. That was because one was from N. Korea, the other from S. Korea and in those days, couples like that weren't allowed to be together for political reasons.
Has anyone else read that account? If I can dig out that issue, I'll sum up the account here.
Now, if the couple were a modern-day couple, they would have 'moved on' already, much less wait donkey years for each other! -
dun talk abt years, just a couple of wks also hard lah.....Originally posted by Rhonda:Now, if the couple were a modern-day couple, they would have 'moved on' already, much less wait donkey years for each other!
but of cos there are exceptions.... ren jian you qi ji!!! -
So far, wo zai deng dai de qi ji always zhong tu er fei!Originally posted by tare:dun talk abt years, just a couple of wks also hard lah.....
but of cos there are exceptions.... ren jian you qi ji!!! -
for Abelard and Heloise, sorry.. just me thinking... what the hell is wrong with these 2 morons??? i think the bashing of Abe must have turned his brains into mush or something... and geez louise.. here's a good (although stupid) man who loves you enough and whom you love... and after all that, they slink away and not see each other again???
again.. what the hell is wrong with these 2 morons?? they were both well-educated!! maybe it's true... never mistake education for intelligence..
as for the Korean couple, hey... if you know it's love, won't you wait?
love has reasons reason can never understand... -
i think they were not morons; the problem was the moronic church.
perhaps it was a case for them to be together and be ostracised from the church or to choose what they did.
in that era the church was an important part of social organisation.
to be ostracised meant shame and it had vast consequences. (and it would mean having to give up his vocation or if you like, calling. yet it was not permitted to him to pursue both his vocation and love.)
pity people had/(have?) to conform to the ethos of the church??? -
I wish I had a man like this one in this story......
I have been involved with a charming man for some time. He makes me feel radiant and beautiful at the start of every day. He uses luscious terms of endearment, appreciates me completely, and is sensitive to my every mood. He is the Egyptian man from whom I buy my coffee early each morning on the way to the office. He has made serving coffee a passionate and generous encounter. All he wants in exchange is a smile. I'm ready for anything after enjoying that big grin and those warm words. I cant imagine taking on the day without him.
- Anonymous -
This one has fate all over it...you all believe in fate?
She was a beautiful Pom Pom team member/cheerleader for the university we both attended and I was a spectator of both the basketball games and of her wonderful dancing. She was so lovely that my father even made mention of the fact that he would adopt her if ever given the chance. I would jokingly ask my father, when I would leave my seat, "...to keep an eye on my girlfriend." This was an innocent bit of fun for the two of us. We enjoyed the thought of knowing the "lovely little brown girl with the cute legs" Although I was constantly encouraged by my father and his friends, I never introduced myself to her. I suppose I did not want to ruin the thought of her being my "girlfriend".
The following year, I graduated from the university and moved to a large city and began my career. One of my best friends was getting married and I was asked to be an attendant and usher at the wedding. As the crowd began to gather, I noticed a young lady enter the church. I immediately called "dibs" to the rest of the guys. "Fellas, stay back, I get to seat the lady in the green dress!" As I walked her to her seat, I realized I would like to talk to this lady for a long time. Although we were not able to talke much that night, we did exchange numbers.
During our first date we discussed many topics and seemed to have much in common. Surprisingly, one of the things we had in common is our Alma Mater. We both inquired into each others activities at school and involvement in campus organizations. Her answer was that she was on the nationally recognized Stephen F.Austin State University Pom Pom Squad. My heart began to poundand my hands began to sweat and my mouth became very dry. "You were the girl on the end with the uh, uh really nice tan!" Yes, that was her, sitting across from me smiling!
This story is a gift from God. Well, it is and she is. Her name is Navaz, from an ancient Persian language, and it means "Gift from God".
God has answered my prayers of meeting the one he has chosen for me.We were married on December 18, 1993 and are very thankful for the two friends that were married and allowed us to actually meet each other, this time, in person.
- Jeff Dickerson
Houston, TX -
they were already married.. and at that time, only the church could..
he chose to "stay away" from her, resulting in her uncle thinking he's abandoned her... and as any self-respecting uncle would do, he went and beat the crap outta him... heck.. i would too!
they CHOSE to be apart.. the church didn't separate them...Originally posted by TehJarVu:i think they were not morons; the problem was the moronic church.
perhaps it was a case for them to be together and be ostracised from the church or to choose what they did.
in that era the church was an important part of social organisation.
to be ostracised meant shame and it had vast consequences. (and it would mean having to give up his vocation or if you like, calling. yet it was not permitted to him to pursue both his vocation and love.)
pity people had/(have?) to conform to the ethos of the church??? -
Nice thread, carebear!
I still maintain the view that love can be simple and pure, even in modern days, if you can find the right one for yourself...
But that's just me, idealistic and always hopeful... -
every couple have a long story to tell.
i luv my sweetheart -
Sharing a beautiful story I plucked from somewhere
Older women, younger men! The love that dare not speak its name
by Leanna James
Do we dare date -- or better yet marry -- a younger man? You bet! Writer Leanna James shares her experience.
Can it work?
I couldn't resist the headline: "Older Women, Younger Men: This Year's Hottest Trend!" I plucked the magazine from the stand near the checkout counter and flipped to the article. The photo inside featured a stylish woman of about 35 in a cherry-red power suit clasping hands across a restaurant table with her dinner date. He was a clean-cut, clearly muscular young man wearing a snug white shirt and a satisfied-looking smile. A half-finished bottle of wine and a slender vase holding a tropical flower rested on the tablecloth, still-life fashion, between the glowing pair.
There was nothing else in the photograph. No other diners sneaking glances, no waiters raising eyebrows, no former spouses or lovers storming into the restaurant to stage a jealous scene. A snapshot of my own life three years ago would have included all the above in the first take. And that would have left 23 more exposures on the roll, each documenting another reaction, another consequence, another sea change flowing from the choice I made.
I skimmed the article, looking for any parallels between the women I was reading about and me. "Fabulous sex!" the first woman, "Geri," announced. I could almost hear her contented purr. "Barbara," a 30-ish accountant who had dated a 22-year-old lifeguard, confessed: "My affair with Steve worked wonders for my self-esteem!" "Revitalized my life!" a therapist called "Karina" exclaimed, who went on to describe scuba-diving and motorcycle adventures with her 20-something sugar. All this checked out with my own experience -- the sexy parts especially -- but it was still too tame for me.
Wait a minute: tame? Harleys, coral reefs, Olympian sex-a-thons? How much further can you go? I'll tell you how much: I broke a taboo none of these women spoke about. None of them mentioned, God forbid, love. None talked about a future. And none were so extravagant, so wild, so foolish as to marry the guy Â… and then have a baby with him. I did.
The roar of social approval dies down awfully quickly when your "wild side" turns into a wedding -- and less than a year later, a brightly painted nursery. I was supposed to have had my fun and moved on. What woman in her right mind would choose a man not quite old enough to rent a car to be the father of her child? Or, as my best friend put it: "How can you be serious about a guy who was just learning the alphabet when you started college?"
When I met D, I was 36 years old; he was 24. I had been married once before; he had lived with a girlfriend for two years after college. Our experiences were not comparable. Nothing in our backgrounds suggested our paths would ever cross, much less merge: D grew up in the South Bronx, where life unfolded (and sometimes exploded) on the streets, the stoops and the asphalt lots. I grew up in a Southern California suburb, where life was contained within beige-colored walls and plushly upholstered cars, and walking anywhere was considered as uncivilized as cleaning your teeth with a twig.
D won scholarships to Ivy League schools, studied economics and went to parties with the sons of senators. I went to a liberal women's college where I studied feminist literary theory and performance. At our parties, people drank wine and debated sexual symbolism in Victorian women's poetry. When we met, he was working at a bank and I was working on a novel. He knew how old I was (he looked up my statistics in the bank's database); I thought he was older, or at least old enough to have a cup of coffee with. When he told me, I almost spilled my latte in his lap. "Twenty-four! But Â… you're a baby!" I thought.
He was, by definition, emotionally immature, reckless, unwise about women. How could he be otherwise? He probably thought dating meant splitting a pizza and rolling around on the couch, and kept nothing but beer and mustard in his fridge. I pictured evenings watching The Simpsons reruns with his roommates and crossed his name briskly off my list. -
The unexpected
But here's where life played a trick on me. D didn't buy my version of things, wouldn't let me put him in a box labeled "kid." He persisted, and slowly a person emerged, a person who loves Mozart and James Brown, Shakespeare and Toni Morrison, politics, history, long walks in the woods. He likes smart conversation with smart women, and thinks a woman without character and life experience is boring. He also likes kids -- and told me, much later, that he'd started to dream about our family on our third date.
This younger guy turned out to have more depth and emotional maturity than any of the men I'd fallen for before, most of them boys of around 40 or so. Grown-up boys who could charm birds out of trees but would never change a diaper, who could dance and dazzle but never hang in there for the laundry, the bills, the baby throwing up in the middle of the night. When our daughter cries, D is often there before me. He changes her diapers and sings to her, brings me coffee in bed, rubs my feet at night when I come home from teaching. He tucks love letters under my breakfast plate and tells me I'm beautiful. And he has the energy to play chase and horsy and piggy-back with our daughter for hours on end -- and still have plenty left over after she goes to bed.
When our daughter wakes up in the morning, we know she is waking to a world of both love and pride: not only between a pink mommy and a brown daddy (which we are and proud to be so), but between an older mother and a younger father who are willing to replace social convention with the powerful, risky conviction of their hearts. Not everyone would agree this is the best model for a child. There are safer choices, certainly. But we would rather our daughter learn to choose courage over conformity, to honor what is unique about herself and let that be her guide when the day comes when she, too, must navigate the terrain of adult love and longing.
And although it's early still, the signs show that her spirit is as dauntless and bold as we could wish for: a princess, yes, but also a tiny female warrior-in-the-making. Sound perfect? Sorry if I misled you -- our marriage isn't a fountain of joy 24 hours a day (and if it were, no one could stand hearing about it). Like every other married couple on Earth, my husband and I have our problems. But they are not the problems you might expect. It is not that I can talk about feelings and he can't. He can, actually, very well. And it's not that I'm settled down and he's still wild. I'm the one who wants to vacation in Morocco; he'd rather rent a log cabin in Maine.
Our problems, unlike our relationship, are not unique at all. When we argue, sad to say, we become the most boring, average couple in America: "Are you going to let her play with that?" "What do you mean you left the diaper bag at home?" "You sure you're not in the mood?"
I wish sometimes I could tell staring strangers what our relationship is. I'd like to tell the teacher at a preschool fundraiser who continued to believe, even after I corrected her politely, that D was one of the young caterers, and kept handing him her glass. I'd like to inform the mother at the toddler playground who announced to my husband, as he came in through the gate on his way to join us at the swings, that only parents were allowed. She continued to eye us both suspiciously even after I planted a kiss on his cheek and our daughter yelled, "Daddy!" and jumped into his lap.
I'd like to write to the author of a study on evolutionary psychology, who "proved" that husbands and fathers (not wives and mothers, apparently) are fettered by family and need freedom outside it. This means, naturally, having access to new, ever-younger sexual partners. I'd ask him: what about my husband and me? I can imagine the writer's response. "He may adore you now, but when your hair goes gray, he'll be whistling a different (evolutionary) tune!" -
Is this true? Will my younger, handsome husband want me in 10 years? Twenty? Will he still take off my T-shirt with eagerness, or will he peck my cheek and roll over to dream of nymphets? I gave serious thought to this before we married. It hurt to succumb to that fluttering doubt, but then our culture has always equated a woman's aging with high tragedy. The fall of the Roman empire is nothing compared with the fall of a female face. How can I fight against hundreds of years of history, all telling the same story?
I look at my face in the bathroom mirror and note the changes, the laugh lines around my eyes (at least I've laughed them there), the strand of gray that my daughter, giggling, pulled at last night while playing with my hair. My husband comes up behind me, encircles my waist with his arms, and whispers in my ear, "You're beautiful. You're beautiful now and you'll be beautiful in 50 years." I look in the mirror again, look at the wisdom and depth that is beginning to show in my face, and think, "Why not?"
So maybe there's another story. Maybe we haven't been told the whole story, or we're simply inventing a new one. There are a few of us out there: Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins come to mind (I couldn't ask for better role models). And from history, more inspiration: the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, who eloped to Italy when the bride was 40 and the groom 33, and whose happy marriage lasted the rest of her life.
"The road behind us, literature tells us, is strewn with the forms of the female abandoned."
Ah, but poets? Actresses? Those are the romantics, the exceptions. What about all the women who've been left? The road behind us, literature tells us, is strewn with the forms of the female abandoned. The majestic Léa, in Colette's celebrated novel Chéri, stands bravely aside as the love of her life marries a girl of 19, for society's sake. Sasha, in Jean Rhys' famous Good Morning, Midnight, ends up in her 40s abandoned in a shabby hotel room with only a bottle of wine for company. This raises the inevitable question: when I start to look older, will my husband hit the road? Will I be left to raise my child alone? That's the real fear in the collective unconscious of women my age. And the answer?
Truthfully, I believe my husband has as much reason to stay with me as I do with him. We're both lucky in this relationship (although he calls himself the lucky one). And if our luck changes, well, if I lived my life in anticipation of all the rotten things that might happen, I'd move into the hall closet and never come out. Men leave women all the time, and women leave men, for as many reasons as there are human beings. Or Â… they don't leave. They love one another and keep loving through all the challenges this existence offers, including the demands of children, the struggles over money and even, yes, the aging of the body.
I believe my husband and I will stay together. But marriage and children are still no guarantee. Neither for us -- nor frankly for anyone else, no matter how encircled by tradition. Divorce statistics are only too clear on this point. And yet our marriage, here on the fringes of what security is supposed to look like, feels dynamic and alive. We don't have society's approval, so we make our own.
Our anniversary is approaching soon. We plan to celebrate at our favorite Italian restaurant. Look for us there. Like the woman in the magazine photo, I'll be wearing a cherry-red dress -- although it may have milk stains from my daughter's bottle earlier that evening. I'll be holding hands under the table with a striking young man, but one who wears, as I do, a gold wedding band.
Look closely. Memorize the details. Candlelight flickers over my husband's face, illuminating his dark eyes and the faint shadows beneath them, shadows from a long work week and a need for sleep -- our daughter's been climbing out of her crib at night. I stroke the inside of his wrist and he smiles, a smile that has the same effect on me now as it did the first time I saw it, behind a paper-cluttered desk at a downtown bank. "D," I begin, wanting to tell him, but he speaks first.
"To us." He raises a glass of wine. "Happy anniversary." He reaches across the table and brushes my cheek softly as a waiter hovers discreetly in the background. "Here's to 50 years more."
"Fifty at least."
No, we're not the power suit and her romance-novel date. When we leave, we'll be going home to a babysitter and a messy flat, not a sexy hotel. But I doubt we're any less happy than that air-brushed magazine couple. Our happiness is something you can touch and hold. Something you can look at and know: these are not models. These are human beings, one older, one younger. In the end, what does it matter which is which? -
Eric, this is a love story that I really liked! Thanks for sharing it here!
This story doesn't leave a cloying, sickeningly-sweet feeling that most of those saccharine-dipped love stories tend to do. hehehe! This one is grounded in real life, and it doesn't over-dramatise.
A great story! If both parties are deeply in love and willing, differences CAN be conquered. -
Wat happen to the baby?Originally posted by TehJarVu:Abelard and Heloise
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The story of Peter Abelard and his wife Heloise is one of the saddest love stories of Western history. Abelard, who was born in 1079 AD, came to Paris as a young man and taught classes at the new school there. He was a very good teacher, and used logical methods to try to answer difficult questions about the nature of God. Students came from all over Europe to hear him lecture.
Abelard lived in a rented room in a house owned by a churchman named Fulbert. He fell in love with Fulbert's niece, Heloise (HELL-oh-ees). When she got pregnant, he wanted to marry her. At first she refused, because married men could not be churchmen, and so they could not be teachers. He was such a good teacher, she didn't want him to have to stop. But if she were not married before the baby came, she would be disgraced herself. So Abelard insisted on marrying her. Finally they got married secretly.
But when Fulbert found out that Heloise and Abelard were married, he hired men to follow Abelard and beat him up. Abelard almost died. He retired to a monastery, and didn't teach anymore, and never saw Heloise anymore either. But Heloise never married anyone else, and Abelard and Heloise wrote letters to each other all through their whole lives. Eventually Abelard founded a convent, and Heloise became the abbess of the convent. Abelard died in 1142 AD, and Heloise in 1164.