Author: Simcha Glassman

Love is this wonderful, amazing, spectacular, warm feeling that spreads from your chest, up to your head, into your stomach and legs, and out to your arms. Love is a physiological response that causes you to only be able to focus on the person that you love, and it can cause a reaction of stress and nervousness that make it hard to breathe or eat. Love is an unexplainable thing that there are not enough words in the English language to even begin to explain what it is or how it feels.  Here’s my definition of what is love:

Love is sleeping next to the person you deeply care about and waking up to see their face and you smile. It’s when you fall asleep with your arms around each other and your faces so close that you can feel their breath on your face. Or, alternatively, they put their arm around you randomly during the night. It’s having a nightmare and they are there to hold you and comfort you. Love is getting used to sleeping next to someone because you’ve always slept by yourself, but now you’re not and you smile at that thought.

Love is taking care of each other no matter what.  It’s waking up in the middle of the night because your partner is sick, taking care of them. and giving them the help they need.  It’s doing what you can to make them feel better when they are sick. It’s putting ear drops and squirting water into their ear to try to help them get fluid out of their ear. It’s buying medicine and tissues and making sure they get the rest they need.

Love is spending as much time as you can with your partner. It’s making sure your weekends are free so you can see them. It’s sometimes driving/traveling three hours, or five hours, or some insane amount of hours just so you can see them again. It’s having to juggle your time so that you have time for your friends and your partner. It’s going out for a walk, or to the movies, or to a restaurant, or on a picnic, or alternately, staying in and ordering delivery or binging on Netflix or Amazon.

Love is accepting someone for who they are. It’s loving all those little quirks of theirs that you find both annoying, but somehow also endearing. It's laughing at their lame puns that everyone else finds annoying, but they always make you laugh. It’s knowing while they may not be perfect they are perfect to you. It’s being willing to adapt and change and find a good middle ground.

Love is having the power to forgive. It’s communicating with your partner when things aren’t right. It’s being able to work through any and all obstacles that you will face together. It’s bickering about where to put a picture, or what to eat for dinner, or what to do for the day, and then realizing that there was no need to bicker in the first place and apologizing. It’s having little miscommunications that get resolved. It’s loving each other through the bad and the good. Love is knowing when to admit you’re wrong.

Love is seeing your partner smiling and laughing and getting a warm tingling feeling in your stomach because you know that they are smiling and laughing because of you. Love is making each other lives better. Love is telling your partner how special they are and how much you care for them and appreciate them. Love is not holding any of it back.  Love is love.   

So unless you are like Patrick Star and live under a rock, you’ve probably seen and/or heard of the #metoo campaign. If you haven’t, let me enlighten you. What this campaign is doing is it’s bringing the topic of sexual assault and harassment to the forefront of societal discussion by asking survivors of sexual assault and/or harassment to tell their stories if they feel comfortable, and to write the words “me too.” The goal of this campaign is to address the issue that sexual assault and harassment is all too common in our society, and to convince people in positions of power that this issue needs to be addressed. 

Now I’m not going to deny that social media can be and is a powerful tool to raise awareness about political and societal issues, but the problem is that too often enough the discussion doesn’t go any further than someone posting their story and/or writing the hashtag. This is not to say that the responsibility should be put onto the survivors. Taking the time to share your story to the world certainly takes a lot of bravery and can be very hard psychologically. 

No, the responsibility needs to be put onto everyone else to speak and fight for the survivors so that no one, ever, has to go through this.

We need to be having conversations. That’s the first step. Conversations about victim blaming; that a woman somehow asked for it because of the clothing she was wearing, or that she was “not acting like a woman,” or that she seemed like she wanted it or consented and then changed her mind. About the strict clothing restrictions in public schools that shame girls for their bodies, and then punish them if they don’t follow these restrictions by pulling them out of class, therefore embarrassing them in front of their classmates and taking away from valuable class time learning. Why is it always women’s fault? 

How come we can’t just teach men that they don’t have an automatic right to a woman’s body no matter how they are acting, or what they were wearing? How about we teach men the meaning of consent and that no means no, and a woman has every prerogative to change her mind at any point. How come we can’t teach men to treat women with respect? 

Let me take a moment to acknowledge that men also get assaulted and/or harassed. The statistics we have suggest that more women then men get harassed and/or assaulted. But often enough men don’t talk about it because they don’t want to seem weak or not manly. Most often men get attacked because they aren’t masculine enough or that they’re weak, but that just isn’t true. How about we teach tolerance. How about we teach men that it’s okay to have feelings and to embrace their feelings, and that that doesn’t make them not manly.  

Now the next step after having these conversations is to do something, change something. This is the hard part; in order to change the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment we need to change societal values. We need stop sexualizing women’s bodies as something to incite sexual arousement, and at the same time we need to teach men that a women can wear as much or as little clothing as she wants, but the latter does not warrant men to succumb to their sexual arousement at any cost. We need to teach men to control their urges and to not look at a woman and think sex. We need to teach consent on all levels. 

We need to start enforcing stricter sentences for those who decide to sexually assault or harass a person. There is no excuse that if someone is convicted of rape, and there is solid evidence, that they should only get six months in prison, and then end up serving only three of those six months because of good behavior. That is just ridiculous. It doesn’t matter how many academic accolades or how many sports awards the person has, there is no excuse for someone saying crude things, touching, or forcing themselves on someone without their consent. 

We need to do something. We need to put pressure on lawmakers to change the laws to support victims instead of further traumatizing them. We need to eliminate the stigma surrounding sexual assault and harassment. We need to develop compassion and understanding for our fellow human beings. We need to be more loving and more supportive. 

It’s time to incite the change that has been too long forthcoming.       

If there was a bank robbery going on right now and I needed to use my super awesome kickass ninja skills to beat up the bad guy, there’s no one I would rather have helping me kick some bad guy butt than my boyfriend. Because with our combined 25 years of martial arts experience we are definitely a force to be reckoned with, and anyone who wants to mess with us should be very afraid.

No matter what I am doing in my life, there’s no one I would rather have as my voice of reason, my cheerleader (yes a boy can be a cheerleader too), my support when I’m lost, or my comfort when I’m crying. You make me look forward to even the simplest of task, like doing the dishes.

As I have been thrust upon this crazy world known as adulting you have been there to not only listen to every complaint I have about the job application process, but to also offer some words of wisdom and help make my cover letter 10x better. And you have helped encourage me and remind me that I will find a job and have been optimistic when I couldn’t after getting rejection after rejection.

Honestly I never thought I would find someone as perfect as you. And yes I will use the word perfect even though there’s no such thing because you are perfect to me and that’s all that matters. You have helped me learn to love myself and you have restored my faith in boy humanity.

All I want to do is spend all my time with you and do anything and everything with you. I guess that explains why our list of things we want to do with each other is so long and just keeps growing.

When I can’t be with you because of distance I feel like I’m missing a part of myself. I look forward to the day where we never have to leave each other, and I also look forward to spending a lifetime together traveling the world, making that duet we also talk about, going camping, seeing Niagara Falls on the Fourth of July, or just spending the night watching movies in the living room snuggled together on the couch. No matter how big or small, I want to do it all with you.

I never thought I would need someone as much as I need you and the funny thing is, I’m okay with that.

I’m okay with that because I know that no matter what you will always be right there by my side and will do everything you can for me. I know that no matter what you will always love me even when I’m not exactly lovable or when I don’t love myself. I know that you will always encourage me and help me to be the best person that I can be. I know that my love for you will never dwindle or fade, but will only multiply and grow because it already does.

I love you more and more each day, and I didn’t know love could feel this great. I knew being in a relationship would be great, but I never realized it would be this awesome until I met you.

So thank you for being my partner in crime and for helping me fight all of life’s battles. I love you.

Love always,

Your partner in crime

Finding the right person can seem like a maze and you don’t see an end in sight. You’ve dated so many people and you’re tired of giving your heart away to only have it crushed every time. And then you find the person who seems right. Or maybe you’ve lived your whole life so far without ever finding someone and now you finally have.

At first you’re happy. You heart fills with warmth and every time you are around this person you are overcome with an overwhelming flood of happiness and you realize this is what love is supposed to feel like. You find yourself smiling all the time and you feel the magnetic pull toward this person that gets you through even your hardest days knowing you will get to see them soon. You feel like you can finally trust someone, like you finally found someone who truly understands you. And even though you have been through so much pain you start to open up your heart again when you thought you never would.

Maybe this is your first love, and this overwhelming feeling of happiness makes you feel safe and secure. And so you give your heart to this person because you think they are the one for you and that you’ve waited so long for this.

But sometimes what seems great at first can turn sour very quickly. When things finally start becoming very serious between you two, your significant others’ true colors begin to show. They don’t come to you when something is wrong. They pull away without any explanation. You start to wonder what went wrong. You start to think it must have been something you did. Maybe you were too clingy, maybe you weren’t understanding enough, maybe you weren’t listening, or maybe you didn’t love them right or enough.

You start to wonder if they are going to leave you and the thought of that possibility sends you into a downward spiral. You are convinced that you will never find the one, that you must have done something to deserve being hurt.

And just when the world has turned dark and grey they come back. Maybe your pleas for attention finally got though. Maybe your promises to be better and to change convinced them to give you another chance. Or maybe they finally decided to tell you what was going on.  And then things are good again. The world is bright and happy and you know that this person has to be the one. No one else could ever make you this happy.

Now you are on a rollercoaster of emotions with your significant other. For a while things are perfect and they are perfect and it’s like your dream has come true. And then you are sitting alone crying, begging them to talk to you, to tell you what’s wrong, to love you. And you decide to stay because you don’t think you could do any better than this. Or because you are entirely convinced they have to be the one and you’ll take the repeated pain just to be with them.

I’m sorry to tell you, that is not love. That is an unhealthy, toxic relationship. If you partner does not put in as much effort as you in the relationship then they do not really care about you. If they did they would treat you as you deserve and they wouldn’t make you wonder.

I know that you wanted it to work and that you wanted them to be the one because you don’t know if you ever will find the one, but please believe me when I say you will. You will find the person who loves you unconditionally and who will treat you like you deserve. You will know what love really feels like. You will be happy and won’t have to fight your partner to talk to you or cry from the pain because they have you alone. I know it can be hard to leave someone because you don’t want to give up on them, but you must know your worth and put yourself first since they won’t.

Happiness is just around the corner, so please don’t settle.     

Six months ago I unknowingly started the most fulfilling, most amazing journey of my life. I met the love of my life on an online dating site and I haven't looked back since. I remember the warm feeling that filled my soul and heart when we decided to make it official. 

But there was a shadow lurking, a shadow of worry and nerves. This was my first relationship, my first kiss, the first time I would potentially have sex, and the first time I had the potential to feel love for another person. I freaked out. How was I supposed to know when was the "right" time for all of this to happen? After all, they don't exactly teach you this kind of thing in school. How was I supposed to know whether my relationship was growing too quickly or not quickly enough?

I had no clue where to start, but my first logical step was good old google. After all the internet is a vast source of knowledge about everything. I read so many articles about when to have your first kiss, when you should say I love you and how do you know you're in love, when to have sex for the first time, and most recently when I should move in with my significant other. As someone who worries about whether or not they are making the right decisions being in relationship was a scary, mysterious thing at first. Not so much anymore.

You see after reading the many articles that all expressed different ideas about love and sex and relationships I realized, through my own growth and from the advice of my friends, there is no right answer. Life is not like a test where there's an option A, B, C, and D and only one is correct. There is no right way to live your life. The only thing that you should rely on to help you make important life, or relationship decisions, is how you feel. 

Are you happy as you are? When you look back on all the decisions you have made and everything you have experienced are you satisfied? Where do you see your future heading and is this decision going to help you toward your future? If you can honestly answer yes to not only these but any other questions or considerations you have then you're doing it right. 

You can also apply this same logic when it comes to a relationship. Don't try to force yourself to make decisions that you're not ready for. If you want to kiss on the first date then do it, or if you want to wait until the second like I did or third then do it. If you are nervous and don't want to initiate then let your partner know, and if they are right for you they will understand and take the lead if that's what you want. 

Same thing when it comes to the decision to say I love you or have sex. If you are deciding whether or not it's the right time, trust your feelings. If the person treats you right and if you feel happier and are smiling more than you ever have then do it. If you feel that warm feeling in your chest and if your stomach is doing flips out of happiness than do it. If it feels right then do it and don't let your fears hold you back. It doesn't matter if it takes days or months. What matters most is how you feel and only you can know that.

Don't try to compare the progress of your relationship to other people. Every relationship is different and is going to grow at different speeds. Don't worry if things are moving a bit quicker than you expected or slower than you expected if it feels like it's right to you. If it doesn't feel right then you need to do some thinking and consideration and talk to your partner as well.

I am the happiest I have ever been because of my significant other. He makes me feel so confident about myself inside and out and he makes me feel so special. I feel so loved and I love him just as much. I don't worry about the pace of our relationship anymore. I am starting to trust how I feel to know when it's time to move to the next step. And when that feeling comes I don't hesitate. 

I tried so hard to make you happy; to be there for you when you were falling apart and you needed help finding all the pieces. I tried to be your support, your shoulder to cry on, and your comfort. 

I even tried to change who I was, something I should have never had to do. But it just wasn’t enough.

When I started putting my needs first, you fell apart. You felt threatened I think, like I was replacing you in my heart. But I wasn’t; my heart can hold more than one person close. You didn’t want to believe that though. 

No matter how hard I tried to prove to you that you were special to me and that I still cared for you greatly, it just wasn’t enough.

You started treating me like I was no one. Like I was someone you can call on when you need help, and then can just toss aside. You took my heart in your hand and squeezed until it shriveled up and there was nothing left.

Did you even care about the damage you were doing to me? Did you care how much I cried until no more tears came out? How I racked my brain trying to think of a way I could have somehow fixed things until it drove me crazy? 

You didn’t even try to fight, to help find a solution. After everything. It was over just as fast as it started.

I had to make the difficult choice: to leave before I let you pull me down into a darkness that I would never be able to escape. 

It crushed my heart to leave because I didn’t want to give up, to stop fighting. But I was drowning in a mixture of sadness, anger, and hurt and if I didn’t leave it would have consumed me.

I’m sorry that things had to happen the way they did. I’m sorry that you felt like you had to distance to save yourself. 

But I’m not sorry for putting myself first for once. I’m not sorry that I left.