I had a girlfriend once and we were sure we were in love with each other. Didn't last. No matter how hard we tried it just couldn't last. In her case it had the most to do with distance and space. Distance does NOT make the heart grow stronger, instead what I've found is that it undermines and degrades love unless one finds other ways to keep it strong.
Another girl, wasn't at love "love", has contacted me in the past bit. I was sure back when I dated her that she was the end all beat all for me. She was a sales girl for Hormel meat products and always drove around with a trunk full of meat to sell. What more could a starving, kid from the Army who never had money want than a girlfriend with ready access to great meat!
Now that she and I talk there is nothing there. It's like the pilot light just went out with her.
What's the point?
Things change. People change. Feelings change.
I think about something that my grandmother, Muzzie, once told me. She said that she thought her son, Richard, loved her, but that he didn't like her. How often has that been the case. I know it has been for me, and has been recently. Where I loved someone but I didn't necessarily like them. It's a tough feeling to have.
What's this have to do with writing?
I have a novel I'm currently working on called Sunset Perfect (great title right?). It's all about this. Loving someone but falling out of like with them. The title too is indicative of this difficulty. On the face of it the title sounds like a description of a perfect sunset, but the novel is about the challenges the two main characters face. That perfection has a sunset clause or an end. Toughest novel I've written, but I'm thinking that that fact, the fact that it's the toughest might make it worthwhile in the long run.
