LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH

Barbara Ward- Finneran

As I lay down at night and banish the adult chaos and clutter from my mind, the quiet background thoughts of you grow louder in my head. Catching my breath I wonder how someone who is consistently my last thought at night, and so often my first one in the morning, can just be meant to be fantasies and wishes.

Closing my eyes tighter I try to chase the torture from my mind but my heart wins out as I drift to a world where we can exist as one, blessing and cursing the dreams.  Caught between the moment of knowing it's wrong and knowing it can't be wrong...

Fact? Fiction? Facebook feeling? Excerpt from a memory? Thoughts that flow from your mind?  A chance crossing of paths with an old flame.  Longing for a "fix".   Contemplating missed opportunity.  Toying with inviting trouble into your life, just because right now it feels good.  Really good.  Maybe even better then you have felt in a long time.  Perhaps even manufacturing  or magnifying troubles in your “real” relationship to justify the all consuming what if.

Who hasn't been there? Doesn't matter what the trigger was or is.  Are you being honest with yourself if you say "Not Me".

Marriage and or monogamy is a choice.  Love is a choice that we make. As time passes it’s not always a surge of passion.  Rose colored glasses crash to  the ground - making a commitment doesn't mean that you have found your soulmate.  Or that there isn't someone else out there more suited to you.  It means you've made a choice.  A promise.  A commitment.  

That said, it doesn't always mean we choose right or that adjustments don't have to be made.  Being "half way" there  - embrace your choices and get to a place where you can celebrate them.  Your choices can make you feel really happy or really sad.  Amazingly the two emotions are so aligned - much like love and hate.  So choose.  Choose to be happy.  Love the one you are with - celebrate that choice - after all - you made it.  On your wedding day you make promises.  Each anniversary fulfills those promises.  In life it’s important to make commitments, but remember the importance and value of keeping the promises that you’ve made.  Love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together. Love yourself enough to choose, and then... love the one you’re with...