"Can it be love, when the person doesn't understand you and isn't interested in noticing what you care about?"

This was a comment on my Post-Divorce Jewelry column. What a good question. I've been thinking about it since it posted.

Here's what I've concluded: I think it can.

But here's what else I think: Love isn't enough. We need more than that, if we're going to make it.

I mean, when you think about it, love — just love, by itself — doesn't do a lot. It's nice, yeah. But it doesn't sit up with you when you've had a nightmare. It doesn't call to check in when you've had a hard day. It doesn't remember your birthday. It doesn't learn how to bake something you've mentioned you like.

Love makes us want to do these things, sure. But there's something else — something like consideration, and friendship, and learning not being selfish.  Loving someone makes us want to do these things, maybe.

But it's that something else that makes it actually happen. That something else that makes it keep on happening, once you're past that first giddy phase, once you've settled into a bit of a groove, once you're at the point where you actually know who each other really are.

Maybe it's semantics. Maybe it's just a different, deeper, more real kind of love that makes all that happen. Maybe I'm right and it's a combination of things, and it's love that kind of cements it all together.

I do think Jake and I loved each other. I don't think that stopped. But, in the end, it wasn't enough.