198 Days - Forty Years and Forty Ways to Explain What Love Really Is

1. Love is a mess.
2. Love is never using spaghetti sauce from a jar.
3. Love is removing the “Fox News is Bad For America” bumper sticker from your partner’s car when you know they’ll be travelling throughout the Southeast region of the country.
4. Love is a glass of wine poured and waiting when you come home.
5. Love is staying even when sex takes a back burner.
6. Love is never leaving your partner behind… not for a job, or a career change, or for school.
7. Love is not taking the furniture with you.
8. Love is not being with someone because you think they’re your only chance at getting married; they’re not and you’re only being unfair to yourself.
9. Love is genuine excitement at an email that has nothing to do with a bill that needs to be paid.
10. Love is not having to show everyone on every form of social media that you love someone.
11. Love is telling your mom.
12. Love is trying to work it out if the other person was unfaithful.
13. Love is trying to work it out if you were the other person.
14. Love is bravery in the truest sense.
15. Love is its own muscle relaxer.
16. Love is spending what you earn, no matter what the consequences.
17. Love is dreaming of where you’ll be in five years and smiling.
18. Love is naivety even for those who are wide-eyed and quick thinking.
19. Love is walking your partner to their car at 4:15 am when they have a 6:30 flight to catch, no matter how much you love sleep.
20. Love isn’t lazy so don’t be lazy with it. Use the "I" in "I Love You" and spell out "You." It’s love; it deserves the effort.
21. Love is the greatest form of hurt you can feel.
22. Love is remembering but more importantly, it’s forgetting. 
23. Love is not being the rebound.
24. Love is NOT sharing a love story with someone that you shared with another before. That’s not love; it’s lame. And it’s fake. And it’s wrong.
25. Love is being honest, up front, all the time. It’s having the balls to tell a person what’s going on with you, or your feelings, or something that you did. It’s trusting that they will love you enough to forgive whatever it is.
26. Love is never looking at a person’s past but always looking toward their future.
27. Love is waking up relieved that you’re next to the one you’ve waited your whole life for... again.
28. Love is discussion, debate, and sometimes debacle.
29. Love is the realization that you really aren’t ever going to find better.
30. Love is a candlelit bathroom that only you see.
31. Love is never calling yourself a “hopeless romantic.” That term shows nothing more than a lack of creativity.
32. Love is knowing when to let go no matter how painful or seemingly unjustified.
33. Love is admitting to foolishness and yet still believing that things can be different.
34. Love is feeling nauseated when your future is uncertain.
35. Love is fighting tooth and nail, and never giving up. It wants you to hold on… you just have to show it how hard you want to.
36. Love is gray eyes, full lips, strong shoulders and warm embraces. It’s knowing that you’re small in a world so very big.
37. Love is watching the Presidential debates with wine and cured meats on a couch that you bought in a house that you own on a street that you love in a city that you never want to leave.
38. Love is coming with me to see Dead Can Dance.
39. Love is humbling, and rewarding, and sticky, and mind numbing, but it’s better than the best fuck you ever had in your life.
40. Love is… well, it just is. But mostly... it's this...