They say that when you are truly happy and truly in love – you’ll know. You’ll know just by the effortlessness of the relationship you are in, the natural comfortability you will feel when you are with that one true love – and the happiness in the eyes of your friends and family because they see the love and happiness in your eyes as clear as if you were wearing a T-shirt that says, “I’m In Love”. If this is true – then I know.

For the first time in my life, I feel as if I finally succeeded in falling in love. I say succeeded because the love Christine and I have for each other is so genuine, so pure – that it even baffles the both of us. We both are sometimes so blown away by the happiness that we bring each other that we are afraid that we are going to wake up one day and find out it was all a dream – but thank God – our love is very real.

When I first discovered what love is, I had hoped that when I uttered those three words, it would be to someone that deserves them. Someone who was so special and so perfect that when she heard me say “I love you” – it would make her heart melt. I also hoped that one day, someone would say those words back to me – and mean them.

The first few times I said those words to someone, I meant them at the time – but I am sure now – based on the genuineness and truth behind those words when Christine tells them to me – that the women that told me they loved me in the past could not possibly have meant it with such purity, honesty, and truth as Christine does.

In my past relationships, there were some good times – but there was also negativity, problems, issues, fighting – and nights that were so bad that I still think about them and shudder. There were moments in my past when I questioned whether I would ever be happy in a relationship. There were times when I thought I may as well give up, because if this is love – I want no part of it. And there were nights when I cried myself to sleep because I knew that the love I felt was not mutual – and that is truly the worst pain of all.

But now, the pain is all gone – and now I know what it feels like to truly be in love.

I can see it in the way she looks at me when I am driving, or the way she smiles when she awakens to my kisses, or the way her leg kicks in excitement when I give her a card or a bouquet of her favorite flowers – and so can everyone else.

I will never forget when myself, Christine and my friend Karen went to 16 East for St. Patrick’s Day. Christine and I were seeing each other at the time, but had not professed our love for one another yet. But at one point during the evening, Karen came up to me, pointed to Christine and said, “Paul, that girl is in love with you.” When I asked her what made her come to that conclusion, she said, “Don’t you see the way she looks at you?” I may not have seen it back then – but I surely see it now.

But despite all of the ways I know that I am truly in love, I think the most defining example is that if I got the chance to live my life all over again, but had to do everything exactly the same way without changing anything – but carried the knowledge of my future with me as I re-lived it – I would go through all of my past relationships all over again and endure the same heartache, frustration, sadness, anger – and infidelity – because I knew that in 2001 – none of that would matter – because that is the year when at last, my love would come along.