My Dear Son,

You are less than a year old as I’m writing this, but someday this will be relevant to you.

Love is a crazy, complicated, incredible thing. It will likely be the source of your greatest joy and your deepest sorrow in life. Unfortunately, those two are often tied together…

First thing’s first; love whom you love! The heart wants what the heart wants. Whether the person you love is a man or a woman makes no difference to your mother or I. What matters is how (s)he treats you and us.

Love, like a good scotch, gets better with age. I mean this in two ways. One, when you’re young, love is different. A lot of people will tell you that young people don’t really know what love is. I will just tell you that, when you’re young, you love differently than when you’re older. There’s nothing more “real” about love when you’re older. But the way you experience love does change with the years. And two, the longer you’re in a true, loving relationship, the better that love gets. As you grow, change, and mature with someone close to you, you make tiny connections each day that bring you closer together. As the years go by, you realize that you are inextricably bound to this person and it’s wonderful.

Don’t be afraid. Jumping into and getting out of love is a scary thing. It means change. It means taking responsibility for yourself and for another in a way that you’d never have to if you remain single. Be courageous and take the leap. Whether it’s deciding to ask that person out on a date, or deciding that this relationship isn’t working out for you, fear is never a good enough reason not to do what needs doing (that’s good advice for just about anything in life).

Be responsible. Take responsibility for your emotions and actions. Understand that your words and actions will have an effect on someone else. Know that, no matter what you feel toward that other person, you are still the only one that’s responsible for your own happiness. Other people might be a catalyst, but they are not the cause of your emotions. This may sound like a contradiction, but it isn’t. You are the only one that has control over you…be responsible for what you do and be responsible for what you feel. It means being the better man, knowing that someone might blame you for the way they feel, but knowing they are not to blame for how you feel.

“You can either be right, or you can be happy.” I often attribute this quote to your grandpa, even though I’m now unsure whether he actually said this to me or not. Regardless, it’s good advice. This is usually uttered in a tongue-in-cheek matter, a riff on the age-old joke that a husband can never do anything right around his wife. This is not how I mean this. What you should take away from this is that there are actually very few things in life that are worth fighting over, especially with someone you love. Too often I see couples bickering over trivial matters and, at the end of the argument, nothing monumental was decided, but both partners are angry and hurt. Pick your battles. Know what issues are worth a potential strain on your relationship and which ones are just left alone. Most of the time, being right in a fight with your partner still means that you’re ultimately wrong.

Be safe. This is not only about your physical safety, but also about your emotional safety. A loving relationship should never cause you physical or emotional harm. Yes, the occasional argument may be uncomfortable, but true love builds up and never tears down. If you feel like you can’t trust the one you’re with to have your best interests at heart always, then that person doesn’t deserve your love. Move on.

Sex ≠ Love.  You’ll hear this so many times growing up that you’ll be sick of it. But it’s true…you can easily have one without the other. This goes along with the previous piece of advice about being safe. Not only do you need to be physically safe when it comes to sex (you know what I mean), but you also need to make sure your heart is safe. It’s too easy to trick yourself into thinking that you’re in love when you’re really in lust. Unfortunately, most of us have to learn this the hard way…

Finally, love is a choice. I don’t mean this to contradict my first piece of advice where I said that the heart wants what the heart wants. This goes along with my point about love getting better with age. When you’ve moved beyond the initial chemical attraction between you and the one you love, when the initial dopamine high you used to feel every time you see that person starts to fade, that’s when you have a choice to make. You can either choose to move on to seek the next dopamine hit, or you can choose to stay with the person that you fell in love with. Every morning when I wake up, I make a choice  to love your mother. It just so happens that 999 days out of 1000, she makes that choice very easy. But even in the best relationships, it requires a choice to turn toward each other instead of away in order to keep things going in the right direction.

There is nothing greater on Earth than being in love and nothing more devastating than losing it. As your father, I look forward to being here for you when you need someone to celebrate with or you need a shoulder to lean on.

And no matter what, your mother and I love you very, very much.

Love,

Your Dad