DJDAMAGE: Actually, I took some time to decide if I was even going to propose to her. I had just 6 months prior come out of a pit of misery relationship with a borderline personality disorder, certifiable psychotic/neurotic woman after 4.5 years. I learned a lot from that experience, so needless to say I was more than a little wary of the idea, but it was exactly this experience that made me appreciate the stability of Mrs. Tomassi. In the weeks before I proposed I talked with a lot of married guys. My work out partner and one of my best friends (who was instrumental in my killing the inner AFC) had been married 5 years by then and he told me I'd be stupid not to. I spoke with an 80+ y.o. man, who'd been married over 50 years, who told me how he proposed to his wife before WWII and had to wait until the war was over to marry her. I liked his insights. If you can get elderly men alone and talk to them about women, it will blow your mind the wisdom they can realate.
Once I decided to propose, I knew it wasn't going to be in any traditional way. I had already had a ring that my mother gave me from her marriage with my father. She told me to give it to the woman I'd marry and hoped it would work better for her. So that was taken care of. My wife worked (and still does) graveyard shift at the hospital so she comes home at around 8am. The night before the morning of Valentines day I had bought a roll of butcher paper and some poster paint. I then proceeded to make a banner that said "will you marry me?" and keep my dog off of the wet paint while I made it in the garage. I then strung this banner across the entrance of our garage door in such a way that she'd see it when she hit the remote garage door opener from her car when she drove up in the morning.
She left the car running and came in the house and yelled "yes"; I was still asleep at this point and it freaked me out. I got out the ring, put it on her finger, we did some tequilla shots, she called her mom in Colorado to tell her, we banged and she went to bed and I went to work. The rest is history.
SQUIRRELS, amen, I agree and it took me a long time to come to that conclusion. I have a pretty pragmatic view of love. A popular concept of love is dividing it into different categories and qualification; platonic, familial, eroctic, fraternal, ect. I don't view it that way at all. All love is the same, and the feeling is the same, but how we express it is what changes. I love my mother and my wife, but I only sleep with my wife. I love my friends and I love my daughter, but there are things I'll do for her that I might not for my friends - it's all in the expression.
It's very hard to break out of the romantic definition of love, it's like saying you don't believe in God, but really it's just better defining it. "What is love?" is like saying "What is art?", it's subjective to the individual. That said, I love my wife in that I hold such an affinity for her and who she is that I'll willingly join the rest of my years in life with hers. I reciprocate the same emotion, respect, affinity, trust and desire she displays to me. I would gladly take a bullet for my daughter.
Ask yourself this, "how do you know someone loves you?" I can't get inside anyone's head to make sure for certain so I can only take the behavioral route. People express feelings of love by what they do.
