Modern Love, Revised and Updated: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption

by Daniel Jones

Vulnerability is the animating quality of all love stories, and it can take many forms. In every case, though, vulnerability means exposing ourselves to the possibility of loss, but also—crucially!—to the possibility of connection. You can’t have one without the other.

were Spock from Star Trek, I would explain that human love is a combination of three emotions or impulses: desire, vulnerability, and bravery. Desire makes one feel vulnerable, which then requires one to be brave.

That’s love. Anyone can have it. All it requires is a little bravery. Or a lot.

“We get so fixated on the job we want or the person we’re dating because we don’t think there will be another. But there’s always another.”

To win the person (or the job, for that matter), we think we have to be the most perfect version of ourselves. When our hearts are on the line, vulnerability can feel impossible.

Because real love, once blossomed, never disappears. It may get lost with a piece of paper, or transform into art, books, or children, or trigger another couple’s union while failing to cement your own. But it’s always there, lying in wait for a ray of sun, pushing through thawing soil, insisting upon its rightful existence in our hearts and on earth.

Like I said, I always thought I’d get married, until I started realizing maybe I wouldn’t, or at least didn’t have

Or, more accurately, what I said, sitting next to her on that silly island in a scene straight out of Brides magazine, was something about love and commitment and not going anywhere and here are these rings I got you, and if you want to actually make it official, that’s cool, and if you don’t, that’s cool, too. And if you want to have a wedding, I’m into it, and if you don’t, who needs it.

“You must never call this a honeymoon,” he told me. “That way no one can ever say that the honeymoon is over.”

Making a fool of yourself for love is ultimately about you, about how much you have to give and the distances you will travel to keep your heart wide open when everything around you makes you feel like slamming it shut and soldering it closed.

No one ever told me that a really great marriage can make up for two decades of horrible dating. No one ever said that all those guys who were just not that into you can be, for women, the psychological equivalent of notches on a bedpost.

When I ask myself how I managed to get so lucky, I think: Because my life in music didn’t work out. Because I went to an expensive law school even though I had no money. Because I needed a well-paying job. Because the law firm assigned me Daniel as an officemate. Because Daniel sent me that email reminder. But most crucial, I think, is that I stopped hiding in the bathroom before it was too late.

WHEN EVE AND EVE BIT THE APPLE

This was one of my favorite stories. The ending was ❤️❤️❤️

In Jess, I saw the love Jesus preached, one unconstrained by conditions and extended to everyone, especially the forgotten, the stranger. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. His cosmology was not studded with creeds, crimes, and contempt; its essence was loving the marginalized. Every fiber of Jess’s being reflected this. She embodied the attributes Jesus was most passionate about: compassion, kindness, justice. How could loving someone who loved so well be wrong?

Many people opposed our relationship and insisted that if we loved each other, we didn’t love God. Our pastor was one.

YOU MAY WANT TO MARRY MY HUSBAND

want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?

We were like the penguin couple in March of the Penguins that accidentally dropped and broke their egg. They looked at the egg for a time, and then they parted ways, because penguins don’t mate for life. They court each other, commit each other’s voice to memory, produce an egg, devote themselves to its care, and when it dies, or matures, the parents part company.

This was how we had come to view our marriage, as a penguin marriage, a partnership devoted to raising children. We had hoped to stick it out until they left the nest, but now it looked as if that would be impossible. So we were just having a last look.

TAKE ME AS I AM, WHOEVER I AM

This story was on Amazon’s series.. Anne Hathaways’ one... it is written differently and the author has another book already on my to read list (Manic) so I am definitely following on this one.

MY HUSBAND IS NOW MY WIFE

Another story full of warmth and a realistic subject. I could understand the author hesitation but at the same time she realized her love for her partner was stronger than her previous perceptions of how her relationship should be.