Love is...

I've been thinking a lot about love lately. With the outpouring of support and sympathy after the recent tragedies in my family, I've been reminded of all of the people out there whom I love, and who love me. I've been wondering, too, about my own capacity for love. Is my love conditional? Is it unconditional for some and conditional for others?

Certainly there are different kinds of love, I am only the bazillionth person to notice that. The love I feel for a significant other is different than the love for family is different than the love for the three or so professors who've touched my life is different from the love for my close girlfriends.

I recently learned that someone I love and admire is guilty of some less-than-moral behavior. It made me question my love for this person. It made me question myself. And then the questioning made me question love (or at least this kind of love). It is difficult when you discover a loved one's clay feet. I want to be the kind of person who can accept her friends, faults and all. I want to continue to love this person, clay feet or no, and I'm carefully, cautiously navigating my way through the feelings of dissapointment to get to acceptance.

I don't know if this friend knows that I love him. He knows I like him, knows I respect him. I've told him so, in so many words, and he responded in kind. I've never used the L-word (I don't mean "lesbians." Just making sure we're on same page). It's not something that friends often say to one another. My last boyfriend never said it to me if I didn't say it first. And he didn't like it if I said it too often. He felt that the word loses it's meaning if we throw it about as a farewell greeting: "Okay I'll pick up some milk. Yes I went to the dry cleaner. Love you, bye." I see his point, but I like to hear it. I had one boyfriend who could never just say it. He'd say, "Tracie, you know I love you, but you've got to stop listening to Cheryl Crow," or something like that. The boyfriend who dumped me all those years ago and hurt me so badly, he never said it. Of course, my family says it to each other all the time. It is a farewell greeting for my father.

But friends, not so much. I do have two girlfriends who regularly tell me they love me, and I them. I had a really close male friend in grad school with whom I used to occasionally exchange the phrase. (He and I lost touch when he got engaged. I guess I can understand his wife not wanting him to maintain a friendship with another woman to whom he occasionally says "I love you.") Some people get uncomfortable when they hear the word. I'm not sure why. That ex who didn't like to say it too often, he felt that the word placed some sort of obligation or duty on the person on the receiving end, the "you" in the equation. It's difficult for friends of different genders (unless one party is gay), because love and sex are so intimately connected.

It's a powerful word. I wonder if I use it too easily, not easily enough. I wonder if it means to others what it means to me. If when I say it it will be understood the way I mean it; when I hear it, if I will understand.

(For those of you keeping score, this is not a coded message to any reader, though it was influenced by a recent email conversation with one of you.)