Is there any way to know if you are truly “in love”? That’s a great question to explore on Valentine’s Day, no?
First let me say that I believe All Love is Art. It is God’s Art, in its finest form.
Art is our most sacred and deep experience of life, unabashedly shared.
All Art serves as either a Reminder or an Inspiration. It either reminds us of something magnificent, or it inspires us to create or produce or experience something magnificent. Love — God’s Highest Art — does that most profoundly, I have found, in the Otherhood.
If you are in the Otherhood chances are that you can look at your loved one and say…

…”I love you minute-to-minute and not only moment-to-moment.” Then you know you have a relationship that can last.
What I call “Moment Love” is a love that is real, but seems to be built upon our experience of special moments: How it feels when you are making love; what it’s like to be walking side-by-side through the snow to a church service on Christmas Eve; the special glow of dinner and wine…
What I call “Minute-to-Minute Love” is a love that is real, but seems to be built upon our experience of every minute: How it feels to wake up with that person on a Monday morning; the fun of just grabbing soup and a salad or a quick turkey sandwich; standing in front of the bathroom mirror together and seeing your Beloved’s reflection and realizing you’re smiling inside…
I like this minute-to-minute love that people sometimes have — although I experience that it is very rare. It’s about reaching across the front seat while you’re driving somewhere and just squeezing a leg or holding hands. Holding HANDS while DRIVING, folks! Now that’s when you know you’re in love “for real.”
It’s about making breakfast together on a lazy Sunday morning and not being able to keep your hands off each other’s body parts; picking out colors together at the paint store and giggling all the way through it; watching a movie together and reacting the same way in the same places; finding it strangely exciting to work together cleaning up the house or clearing out the closet or tackling the storage bin or sitting on the carpet assembling the corner hutch that you bought on the Internet and just came in boxes and pieces and you have to figure out how to put the gosh-darned thing together…
It’s about jumping in the tub together with some wine and cheese; talking until three in the morning about nothing; chuckling at each other’s habits with warmth melting your heart; lying together and just staring into each other’s eyes with nothing else going on…and nothing else needed for the experience to feel way beyond special.
It’s about paying the bills together with a CD on the player that is a favorite of you both; going grocery shopping together and knowing exactly what the Other would want…and hugging and smooching in the aisles like teenage kids.
It’s about jumping up to get that glass of water or the pen that is never where you want it or the TV remote that’s across the room for no reason that anyone can think of…and doing it to save steps for your loved one and feeling soft and good inside while doing it, and being inordinately happy to see that smile on your Beloved’s face when they say “gosh, thanks, honey. You are so thoughtful!”
It’s about rubbing feet and massaging scalps and nuzzling necks and scratching backs and cherishing every kind of physical contact life provides — and never wanting to miss an opportunity for another.
It’s about that small shot of happiness that runs through your veins when your Beloved’s voice shows up on the other end of the telephone. It’s about feeling safe and deeply cared for in the middle of the night when you’ve had a bad dream and your Beloved hovers over you, asking softly, “Are you alright?”, and then holding you like a child when you say, “Whew. I’ve just had the worst dream.” It’s about dropping all your clothes and running naked in the woods, for the sheer deviltry of it…and the sheer joy of a stolen naked hug with your dearest loved one.
This is Minute-to-Minute Love, when a Saturday afternoon in September, raking the leaves and clearing out the yard with your love partner, makes it clear that you have never been happier before in your life.
You know right now if you are having these kinds of experiences. If you are, you’re saying right now: “Hey, I have that!” If you don’t, you’re saying right now: “Hey, I want that!”
Either way…make SURE you tell your Other on this day and on every day how much you love and adore and cherish them, and every moment that you share. That’s the only way to have what I have described here, and the only way to keep it.