I want to date you, even though we’ve been together for ages.

I want you to bring me a flower to tuck behind my ear and ask me to dance with you like you’re not sure I’ll say yes.

All those yes’s we take for granted now, let’s remember how they once amazed us.

I would like to have a candlelit dinner with you, or a breakfast in bed, or a picnic on the beach. You know, the kinds of dates that rarely see beyond the first six months.

Why is that? I still like candles and picnics. Don’t you?

I want to send you poems by email and read your reply a dozen times. Some things are endlessly fresh, no matter how often we say them.

Let’s talk for hours about everything, the way new lovers do. Just because I’ve known you for years it doesn’t mean I’m done getting to know you. Tell me your goals and aspirations, your thoughts and secrets, like the revelations they are.

As we evolve, constantly, I want to meet you again and again. Those talks that burn deep into the night are as necessary now as they were then.

I want to go on a hundred first dates with you. Dates where we make a crowded dance floor completely our own. Dates where we canoodle in a cozy restaurant corner, ignoring other diners. Dates where you hold my hand on moonlit strolls.

The hopeless romantic in me has not aged with us. She still craves wildflowers and poetry. She still loves candles and dancing under the stars.

When we travel together and see each other constantly, I still want to date you. When we grow old and slow, I still want to date you. When we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this partnership we have is permanent, I still want to date you.

Because nothing is permanent. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is absolutely certain beyond today. And that’s what dates say.

A date says, “I don’t know where this is going, but I want to give it a try.”

A date says, “take my hand; let’s hold this moment between us, because next week I might be too busy for dinner.”

A date says, “I don’t know everything about you yet, but I would like to.”

Even though we’ve been together for ages, those sentiments still have a place in our relationship. I don’t know everything about you, but I would like to talk deep into the night until I do—that is, forever. We don’t know what surprises next week holds, but we can honor that uncertainty by celebrating right now—by taking nothing for granted.

I want to date you, because even though we’ve been together for ages, we’ll never be done getting started.

 

“Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

~ Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

 

 

Relephant Read:

Date a Man Who Knows You are Magical.

Author: Toby Israel

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Flickr