I don't know why the universe was created, but I know it's staggeringly beautiful. Maybe creation followed an overpowering call to bow in gratitude to something so utterly beautiful and wondrous, even if it was just an idea, that the only way to express it was to bring entire worlds into being. I can’t think of anything better to do with my time on earth than this: to be in love with my man, my one, and bring new worlds into being with the work I do. It’s a divine compulsion.

Auspiciously born on Valentine's Day, my significant other is a man who stepped out of time. I still often look at him and wonder where he came from, what dimensions he's seen. Poet, rebel, cosmologist and keeper of sacred knowledge, he introduced me to the mystery and magnificence of romantic love. Without him, my work wouldn't be possible. I call myself a romance expert because of him.

Which is to say I knew very little about romance before I met him. Like many women, I wanted romance but had no idea what it would take to have and to keep it. What I had instead was love that started out for life, confidently and with great passion, but faded under the pressure of unmet needs, endless to-do lists, and old unattended pain passed down through generations.

Like many couples who come to my office, my husband and I were busy doing (and prioritizing) other things: work, children, career, keeping up the home, cleaning up messes. Romance was rarely on the agenda. Somehow we must have thought love can go without, undiminished. And yet, I must have sensed something vital was missing (more about this in the book I'm working on).

One afternoon I sit at a traffic intersection after picking up my kids from school, waiting for the light to turn green, and a poem takes shape trying to make sense of what was missing:

One by one, the cars were passing by.
Another day was heading to the gallows
Where once-upon-desires slowly die
Because a vow had lost its spark and growing shallow.

Her hands a puzzle on the steering wheel,
The light still red a few more moments,
She wondered if her life was real
Or missing pivotal components.

It made no sense; her bed was made,
The kids behind her healthy and a blessing,
And yet she felt there must be more to life than fade
Like every passing car into forgetting.

The light turned green; her evening chores were waiting.
But something told her she had yet to find
The answer she already was creating
As she drove on and left the road she'd memorized behind.

The answer I was creating was to be fully alive in perpetual discovery and amazement of the real-life, embodied expression of love itself, of truth and daring to know myself through the eyes of my lover. I had wanted this to be possible with my first husband. But we were ill matched and clueless. If I would have known then what I know now, maybe we could have worked out, grown deeper and closer together, but I'm not sure.

"The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being," writes Teilhard de Chardin, and this takes two people, on the same mission. Not everybody is matched in their desire for this. But it's possible if you both want to. Romance is the elevator. The sky is the limit.