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True love: “WRONG FOR ME IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY…” A reader of this page sent m…

Aug 10, 2014

True love: "WRONG FOR ME IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY…"

A reader of this page sent me a link to this passage about love, written by the poet Galway Kinnell, and I wanted to share it with you all.

(In case you have trouble reading the post, you can find the full text here, as well: https://bit.ly/1yjolPu)

Oh, how I wish I'd known about this quote when I wrote COMMITTED, my memoir about marriage. This is one of the most wise and generous statements I've ever seen about what real, flawed, intimacy between mature human beings looks like.

I adore the line about needing to find someone who is wrong for you in just the right way. But what really made my eyes spark with tears was the bit about looking at somebody and thinking, "This is the problem I want to have."

Because intimacy will bring you problems. Guaranteed. People are not just sacred bits of old stardust wandering around earth, we are also brilliant creators of trouble — each and every one of us. But to love someone (anyone: a partner, a friend, a child, a parent, a pet) is to look at them with infinite tenderness, in all their outrageous difficulty and supreme pain-in-the-assdom, and to think, forever, "This is the problem I want to have."

Someone who is all wrong for you in just the right way; a problem who is absolutely worth your trouble — this is love.

Have a beautiful Sunday, everyone.

Heart,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall