Beyond some puppy loves and infatuations of my youth I've fallen in love with three women over the years. The first was a high school sweetheart who I dated until we went our separate ways to universities in distant towns. We kept in touch through our college years and exactly when we fell in love is hard to pinpoint. But in the end we wound up marrying. The marriage lasted about a decade and then disintegrated for a variety of reasons. I learned two things from that marriage: just how much work is involved with maintaining a good LTR and just how painful breaking one up can be.
My second love was to a young lady (ten years my junior) with whom I shared some extra curricular interests and we both served in the same community outreach and youth activities. She was bright, exciting and very easy on the eyes. I had no trouble enjoying our social contact. When she learned that I was a private pilot she said that the next time I wanted to log some flight hours she'd love to tag along and see the area from the air. So I picked a day with a perfect weather forecast and invited her to join me for a hundred dollar hamburger (pilot speak for the cost of flying to another city's airport for lunch.) The day of our flight she followed me through the ground inspection and engine run up check lists, asking insightful questions along the way. In the process I learned that she had never before been aloft in a small plane. That worried me a little as she might be frightened or panic over some aspect of the flight. But quite the contrary came to pass, as she was jubilant the entire time we were in the air. A cynic might suggest that she was just gleefully ignorant of the hazards of flight, but I took it as a sign of her confidence in my own competence as a pilot. We flew to a city about a hundred miles away, over scenic forest lands and mountainous terrain. Lunch at the airport restaurant was excellent and we returned via a different route, flying a river course with picturesque farm lands and quaint villages all along the way. Without question it was during that return flight that I fell in love. Here was a beautiful woman, both physically and spiritually, who was thoroughly enjoying one of my favorite things with me (flying) and I just knew that I needed to always be by her side. So after nearly a year of courtship we married and I was more than happy with the prospect of it lasting "'til death do us part." But it didn't work out that way for her and, in just under a decade, we ultimately agreed to separate and then divorce. She found the responsibility of maintaining a LTR, on top of running her own business, to be just too overwhelming. She didn't need to see other men, she was just too much of a free spirit to be that tied down to commitments. To this day she is still single, and a very dear friend of mine. I often remark that I've not gotten any better at being married but I'm a lot better at getting divorced.
But my favorite love was for the woman that I never married. During the ensuing decade of being single I was playing the field and studiously avoiding another LTR. One day at the supermarket I was exasperatingly rummaging through the deli cooler, looking for some aged, hard cheese that clearly wasn't present, when I heard a heavenly voice ask "Are you quite alright?" Expecting to find one of the store's clerks I looked up to see this absolute vision of beauty. I was nearly overwhelmed. She was tall, lean, very shapely and I mean just gorgeous to my eyes. She was also quite young, this time twenty years my junior (yeah, yeah, I know, the older I get the more I become a dirty old man.) But the thing that totally got to me was the beauty of her smile. At that very moment I fell in love with her smile and it wasn't long after that I fell hopelessly in love with the entire woman. Anyway, I stammered and tried to explain that I was looking for a wedge of Asiago and all they had was Parmesan and Romano. I had my left hand (the one nearest her) on the cooler's glass front, mostly to steady the tremor she had induced in it, and she placed her hand on my arm in a comforting fashion and told me of another local market that always had a supply of Asiago from at least two different sources. I thanked her profusely and then she asked why it was so important for me to have Asiago as my hard cheese. I explained that, for most Italian dishes, I simply prefer the taste to Parmesan and that, while many Romano cheeses please me quite well, Romano is really just a category of western hemisphere cheeses so the taste and texture can vary quite a bit. We exchanged some culinary thoughts and observations and she asked exactly what Italian meal I was going to prepare. I said the Asiago was just for a garden variety lasagna, nothing special. She replied that she had every confidence my lasagna was probably indeed something special. I blurted out that I'd be happy to prepare it for her sometime, turning red faced in the process, and damned if we didn't exchange contact information.
For a couple of weeks after that I didn't hear from her, and couldn't quite bring myself to give her a call, so I just fretted over the prospect of pursuing a relationship. After all, I was an old geezer (in my fifties) and she was still in her thirties .... what was the chance? Then in the chanciest of meetings imaginable I came upon her while driving one of the rural state highways. She was pulling her horse trailer, loaded with horses, and had blown out the sidewall on one of her tires. She acknowledged our earlier meeting at the market and said that her hydraulic bottle jack wouldn't fit under the axle or frame and in order to use her high lift jack she'd need to unload the horses. She'd been debating whether or not she should just call a towing service to change the tire for her when I came along. I told her it was no problem as I had a tandem wheel tire changing ramp in my truck. In no time at all she had backed her loaded trailer's good tire up on the ramp and I changed the blown tire for her. Having regained my macho male composure by rescuing the damsel in distress I then bit the bullet and asked if she'd still like to experience my lasagna. She said that she would indeed and invited me to prepare the meal at her farmhouse, north of town. We set a date, I picked up the provisions on the way to her place and the rest as they say is history; a bit of history that I never tire of reminiscing over. That first "date" ended in my spending the night and she fixing breakfast for me the next morning. I must admit that she seduced me more than I her, as I was still nervous as hell about hitting on such a young woman. But she broke the ice over dinner by confiding that she really had a thing for older silver haired guys who were in great shape and physically very active. I was all of that at the time, somewhat less so now that I'm in my sixties, and it didn't hurt that I had cowboyed in my youth and was good with horses and other farm animals. She had recently ended a LTR with another guy, younger than I but older than she, and told me that she really didn't want to enter another fully committed relationship. I told her that I felt the same way as I was afraid that a third breakup of such a commitment would likely be more than I could handle. So we entered into an indefinite term relationship, pledging fidelity to each other for the duration. And that duration was only for a little less than four years, but I've no regrets. Can't say that parting was easy, but it was necessary for her to leave the area to further her professional career and I quite understood. We stayed in touch for several more years and even got together for an occasional fling on the rare occasions when I'd be in her area. Haven't heard from her in nearly a year now and I'm just content to assume that she's moved on to a new love in her life. If I never have another true love in my life this last one can sustain my contentment to my dying day.
Thank you, Miss Petite, for starting this thread and asking the question. In spite of these memories being rewardingly enjoyable for the most part the reliving of them, especially the last one, has proven to be incredibly cathartic for me.