The world is my oyster...or actually my Valentine.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Of course, I am a big fan of Valentine's Day despite the fact that this makes four in a row that I've been single. As someone who values love, of all kinds, I appreciate a day specifically designed for celebrating it. Even if Valentine's Day is often viewed as a celebration of only romantic love, I chose not to see it that way and celebrate all kinds of love.

However, in honor of Valentine's Day, I'm going to explore romantic love a little. Actually not just romantic love, but that kind of love that seems to be all the other kinds combined. Sometimes you meet someone and you have a definite romantic feeling for them but it doesn't seem to be enough because you want it all. Okay, I want it all. I want someone that I can connect with on an emotional level, but also on an intellectual level, on a physical level, on all levels.

It's elusive, and it usually comes in stages. Sometimes the physical first, sometimes the emotional first, sometimes something else first. For me it's often the intellectual first. I'm a sucker for smart and funny guys. They say something that strikes a chord with me, they make a joke, they know about and like the same things that I like. Then the physical. My heart starts racing when I see them, and it gets to the point that I start shaking like a leaf just sitting next to them not out of nerves so much as...I don't know...excitement. Then it's the emotional, I realize in a flash, that they make me feel something.

The problem with finding someone that you feel all of those things for is that relationships are fragile and even when someone does feel the same things for you it doesn't always make a lasting relationship, or they may not ever feel the same thing for you. I've talked before about having faith that if you confess your feelings to them that either you'll be one of the couples that makes it or that at least you won't lose the friendship if the relationship fails or the person doesn't feel the same for you, but what about after that. Your relationship has failed but you're still friends, or you confessed your feelings and were rejected but you're still friends.

I have trouble after the fall. Knowing what it's like to feel all those things for one person I'm just not willing to settle for anything less. I meet my fair share of guys that I like who like me and maybe I even feeling something for them, there's something there, but I just can't go for it because it's not enough something. It's not that I'm pining because frankly after my part has played out, I've made my confession and been rejected, or I've put everything I have into a relationship and it's failed, as long as I haven't lost that person from my life, if I can maintain the friendship, I'm happy with that. I'm just not okay with settling.

If it had only happen once, where I'd met someone that I fell for on every level, then my faith might be shaky enough for me to settle. I might think I'd had my one chance and had failed, or lost, and that it would never happen again. The thing is, it's happened to me more than once. So, I have to assume that it could happen again, and if it's not a once in a lifetime feeling then I have to keep looking for it and, being a person of faith, I have to believe that I'll find it again.

In the meantime I have lots of people I love in lots of different ways and I choose to celebrate all of those kinds of love on Valentine's Day.