Who’S Your Love?

He settles into a plastic Adirondack chair with a diet Pepsi and tells us, for the first time, the story of his marriage, one we had thought was solid and true.

But he and his wife are splitting, after 15 years and two children. Although she filed, he calls it a mutual decision, and OK by him, really.

“Really,” he insists, with a glimmer in his eye that at first looks like a tear.

Then: “There’s someone else. I’ve known her for years. Maybe now we have a chance.”

You could call her “the other woman,” except the two of them had sex only once, well before his marriage. They’ve kept in touch not in body, but in spirit.

She is his best friend. She is the love of his life.

But for 15 years he has been married to someone else, honorably, dutifully and faithfully, and with half a heart.

I’ve heard this basic story so many times, from friends and strangers, that I wonder if it isn’t common to spend days and nights with a life partner who isn’t the one you’d choose in your dreams.

When people talk about the loves of their lives, the stories they tell are as vivid as yesterday, and behind the images you can almost hear music, a song they danced to or made love to, or the tinkling of a music box they play in their mind some nights to help them fall asleep.

I know a woman who for years walked her dog past the summer home of the love of her life, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

I know a man whose lost love is prominent in her profession. He regularly searches the Web for her name, vicariously sharing the ups and downs of her career.

We all know why people don’t always marry their true loves. A parent intervenes, or a pastor, or religious or ethnic imperatives. Or, the loved one isn’t so sure. Or the timing is off. Or a stupid spat pulls lovers apart long enough that the window of opportunity closes on marriage, but not on affection or desire.

Or, the love is taboo, breaking the marriage vows of one or both. Two people who must keep their love secret will almost always relish its memory. Hiding adds juice to passion.

Has any marital happiness survey ever asked: “Are you married to the love of your life?”

Is it possible to answer “yes” only if you’ve loved no one else?

Maybe the daily challenges of marriage put so much wear-and-tear on the paint job of anyone’s love that it can never seem as shiny as it was when it was new.

Maybe if you hadn’t married him, and picked someone else, your husband would still be the love of your life. Maybe the love of your life is bound to be someone you never got to know very well, your memories ending with the two of you in a deliciously warm bath of infatuation.

But this is too cynical. I believe there must be millions of people still holding in their hearts the ones they believe were intended for them, by every fate and god in the universe. But they settled for someone else, loving the one they’re with, as well as they can with half a heart.

It is the only humane and sensible choice.