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when U feel the love,U will get the reason to smile on every single moment u have……

Love, in all its splendor and mess, found a fit expression on Rome’s oldest bridge last year. Inspired by a best-selling book, then the movie version, young couples wrote their names on a padlock. They chained their locks around lampposts on Ponte Milvio. Then they symbolically cut off escape by tossing the keys into the wine-dark Tiber below.

But reality quickly set in, as it often does after passion. Thousands of locks and chains piled up. The lamps atop two light posts crumbled under the weight. Neighbors complained of vandalism. Politicians who tried to solve the problem were accused — and this is bad in Italy — of being anti-love.

Late last month, a solution was put into place. City officials set up six sets of steel posts with chains on the bridge, so now lovers can declare themselves without damage to the infrastructure. And so this city of monuments has just created another one, if at a cost: tossing a key off Ponte Milvio, some Italians complain, may soon be as touristy as flipping a coin into the Trevi Fountain.

“It’s less romantic,” said Costantino Boccuni, 28, a soldier who had just affixed a lock to one of the new spots to declare his love for his wife of six years, Daniela, 26. “It was more beautiful before. It was more original.”

“Now, it’s more like a fashion,” he said.

But still, as Rome’s distinctly lovely light faded into evening, they did it. And in the few days since the new posts went up, dozens of new love locks have been sealed shut on Ponte Milvio, in a perfect world, forever. (Though in practice, the city will periodically prune the locks just as they sweep the coins from the Trevi Fountain.)

The story of how Ponte Milvio, north of Rome’s center, became the city’s symbol of love follows a particularly Italian script blending history, myth, truly ludicrous political posturing and the unexpected.

Built in 206 B.C., the bridge attracted lovers long ago. Tacitus, the first-century Roman historian and statesman, reported that even in his time it was “famous for its nocturnal attractions.” Emperor Nero, Tacitus said, visited the bridge “for his debaucheries.” (It is also the place where in 312, Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius. He became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, which to many Italians stands against the sort of love often found on Ponte Milvio.)

Last year, the writer Federico Moccia created the second installment of a story of young Romans called “I Want You.” Like many affairs, his hero’s starts with a lie: he convinces a potential girlfriend of an invented legend in which lovers wrap a lock and a chain around the third lamppost on the bridge’s northern side, lock it and throw the key into the Tiber.

“And then?” the girl asks.

“We’ll never leave each other,” he says, with no shame.

Mr. Moccia, 44, said he dreamed up the ritual. “I liked the idea of tying locks to love because it is more solid, tangible,” he said. The book sold 1.1 million copies, then the movie came out and soon life began imitating art.

Mr. Moccia said he was stunned when locks and chains appeared on the bridge, though he tied the craze to a lingering malaise in Italy, which is growing old, producing fewer babies and suffering from an economy that often keeps young people unemployed and living with their parents into their 30s.

“It is a precise sign of our times — there is a lack of dreaming,” he said. “We only hear bad news. There is no longer the smile of who we see from afar or near the dream. And that gesture of the lock on the bridge, of the feeling of the iron closing, it’s a promise. It’s beautiful.”

Soon beauty turned to menace. Lovers came from all over Italy, joined by some tourists. The ancient bridge, which also attracts not only lovers but drinkers and no small number of pot smokers, began to be covered in lovers’ graffiti, along with the overwhelming number of chains. This spring, the city cracked down.

Inevitably, politics intruded. In this nation’s long battle between left and right, right-wing parties accused the leftist mayor, Walter Veltroni, with a crime far worse than corruption.

“The left is against lovers,” one rightist city official, Marco Clarke, charged in February.

Fighting words. An artful compromise clearly needed finding. Thus the posts and chains.

Lovers can affix their locks directly to them (which seemed to be the case on two recent, very pleasant evenings on the bridge). Or if they insist on chaining them to the lampposts, the locks will periodically be moved to the posts and chains.

“We have used good sense, meaning we realize that it is about a primary and innocent feeling,” said Silvio Di Francia, a city official responsible for solving the problem. “However, if all the historic bridges had locks we would have a problem with the maintenance.”

So the tradition continues, if with some reservations about compromising on love. Some young Roman said that even before the new posts, the ritual had lost its appeal and gotten touristy.

“I would be embarrassed,” said Michael P., a 22-year-old who withheld his last name because he was smoking marijuana. “It’s a question of dignity. If I want to express love, I will express it in my way.”

But Gianluca and Federica recently declared their love with a lock, as did Ricky and Francy, Piti and Piti, and several Mirkoses with suspiciously similar handwriting. Anna and Philip Colletti, from Montreal, marked their 25th anniversary with a lock. Their children told them about it.

My name is Jaci Rae and this is my true love story. When I first began “serious” dating, everyone was supposed to be “the one.” At least that’s what everyone told me. ‘He’s the one for you.’ ‘When are you two going to get married?’ ‘Has he popped the question yet?’ What many people never saw was the inner turmoil of the relationship and the way the man treated me behind the scenes.

Society sees single people as sad and alone, yet whenever I was in a relationship, I was deeply lonely. However, the underlying current of feeling lonely when I was in a relationship was much less when I was single, only now I had the added value of feeling rejected, too. Why? How could I be lonely when I had “the one” sitting next to me and how, when I was single and alone, could I feel less lonely than when I was with “the one?”

Other questions constantly raced through my mind such as: Was I always the wrong person? Why wasn’t I ever Mrs. Right?

To give you more insight into me and how I ended up in a string of wash out relationships with men who broke my heart and my bank account many times you need a little understanding about my background.

I grew up poor with the added feeling of being very unwanted. I lived in a house that wasn’t a home, filled with drug addicts and sexual predators and I was the child with a key around my neck. My Mom wasn’t home much because she had to work to support two children as a single mother without child support so I grew up feeling very rejected and alone. Do you see the pattern?

Don’t blame my Mom for what happened to me. If it hadn’t been that way, I wouldn’t have grown up to be who I am today. My brother succumbed to the drug life by the age of seven and I said no. There but the Grace of God go I, really. I grew up with my older brother seeking me out for help and guidance, and calling me Mom most of the time.

His escape at a very young age was drugs and alcohol and mine was food. Either I didn’t eat at all, acting out my anorexia or I ate ravenously, something I still struggle with today. Food was the only thing I could control in my own life and the way I learned to punish myself for being so “bad.” Why did I think I was bad? My reasoning as a child was; if I were a good girl, no one would harm me. Therefore, I must be very bad and I was being punished for being so.

By the age of eight, I started on a journey to discover why these men sought to harm me and why I was so ugly, stupid, fat and horrible. I ravenously read every book I could find at the school library during lunch, and magazines at home. Once I was older and had a job (age 12) I bought books and music, even though I needed clothing and food more. It started me on a journey that hasn’t stopped; my love of what makes people tick and how relationships work or don’t.

Let’s move to events that are more recent. With all my education and studying, I still ended up in the “wrong” relationship. Why? I had changed my pattern, or so I thought. I picked people with different backgrounds, different careers, different education levels, different socio-economic backgrounds and different looks. What was wrong? I always seemed to pick the man who would treat me the worst. The “good” ones only wanted to be my friends.

During that time, I was sought after by friends and family, and people who were referred to me to help them understand themselves and their relationships. Why was I able to help them and not myself? I knew the basic rule that I must love myself before anyone else would love me, but I knew that I could never love myself. I was too ugly. Too fat. Too stupid. In addition to any other horrible adjectives I could throw at myself. So I hid myself even further.

The laws of attraction that most of us have heard, but practically no one adheres too, ruled over me. I only attracted those that would hurt me the most because I spent most of my spare time hurting myself mentally with words and physically with food. I hadn’t changed the way I felt about myself, so how could I expect the men in my life to change the way they treated me?

One day, while I was sitting with my then-boyfriend a revelation came over me. The words I had read about, studied and preached to others hit me full in the face. I deserve better and I am not junk. This man, who had been a dear friend for years, was my boyfriend now and he was horrible to me! He was a great friend but sucked at the boyfriend gig.

As I sat in the room with a bunch of NFL people, I realized many of these men and women needed to score points with themselves and their “loved” ones and not just put a show on so others thought they did. That’s when the title, “Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown at a Time – How to Score For Men and Women” came to my mind.

At first, I fought writing this book. How could I possibly mix football and love? I wasn’t even a huge football fan! However, once I sat down to do so it came out quickly (I learned a lot about football along the way!).

The next step I took to write the book was to interview men and women on the street to find out what their thoughts were about relationships and what made them crazy in them. A year and a half of research later I started the real journey of self-discovery. I wasn’t the horrible, awful, ugly person I believed deep in my soul I was. I was a kind person who struggled with her weight, but that didn’t mean I didn’t deserve the best.

It was also at that point that I realized I was much happier being single than being in a relationship and I started to practice the self-love I always spoke and wrote about. For two years, I wrote and I was happy - elated actually. People would stop me on the street just to say how much I glowed. It was amazing.

They say love comes when you least expect it, and that’s what happened to me. It was during my time of happy singleness, that I met the man who would turn out to be my soul mate. We talked for hours and I mean truly talked. I had never really had such in-depth conversation with anyone!

Nevertheless, I ran scared. A month later, I was in a relationship with a man who was fun but a player. After a month with him, I realized what I was doing and headed as fast as I could in the other direction. I called up the other man and we went on our first date. He was kind and sensitive (gorgeous to boot) and he even sidestepped me from doggy poop on our hike.

We spent the entire afternoon and well into the wee hours of the next morning just talking and laughing. However, when I left him for my car I knew I wasn’t going to date him. My mom called me the next day and asked me how the date had gone. I told her what a wonderful time I had and how wonderful he was. I then stated firmly, “…but I am not going to date him.” She said, “oh…how sad.”

Something clicked inside me at that moment and I turned around and said, “No way! I am going to date him.” And that’s just what I did. In that instance I made a choice (and you can too) to change my dating pattern. I was going to go for the man I wasn’t attracted too. The man who didn’t have the element of “danger,” which is what seemed to be underlying in all the other men I had dated.

That was nearly two years ago and I am still totally in love as he is with me. We literally spend almost all of our time together (we work side by side as well) and while we have occasional disagreements, we always apologize. We are a normal couple after all! He really is the most incredible man I have ever known.

So what changed and how can you change your life so you can attract the one person that will treat you like gold? I go over that a lot in Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown at a Time (Simon and Schuster – Fireside). Despite the title, this book is for both sexes and is not all about Football. While I do use football language in the book, it’s not a football book per se.

But the crux of it is this, first your must make a decision to love yourself and treat yourself with respect and second you must make a decision to change your life, which includes your love life. It’s that basic. No one can give you a magic pill or potion and no words can change anything in your life until you make a decision and commitment to yourself to change.

A final word…is my life perfect? Nothing is perfect, but I am perfectly in love. Do I still struggle with my self-esteem? Yes. It’s like any addictive behavior. When you are addicted to self-abusive behavior, it’s something you must keep in check. However, I do love myself and I don’t talk to myself as I used to. I also believe I deserve love and respect.
Do I still struggle with my weight? Yes. That disease will be a life-long struggle. Just like an alcoholic, I have to take it one day at a time.

I encourage you to work towards the best relationship that you deserve. Read, study, but most of all learn about you and affirm yourself. I wish you a great journey in life, love and happiness.

Thank you for reading about me and my life. I hope it helped you in some way gain a better understanding of yourself and perhaps take a step to start changing your life and the way you are loved and love. Blessings, Jaci Rae

From: Candy Apple aka Joan & Stickbird aka Steven

Well I like to say Stickbird aka Steven and Candy Apple aka Joan Have met in person after a whole year of chatting on the Internet. Here’s our story:

Our Meeting

It was the first snow day in the year when I departed to visit Joan. All the way down to Battleboro, Vermont, over 700km, was covered with black ice. There were a lot of cars went to ditch beside the road. I know it is a dangerous day to drive such a long distance. My hands held wheel firmly, my eyes were watching on the road cautiously, my brand new Caliber running smoothly, my thought could not stop imaging how will be when we meet the first time.

Road marks were fading away, one and another. 700, 600, …. 300, it’s getting dark. Winter is not pleasure at all in Canada and north of USA. I crossed New York, it’s Vermont , approaching. Caliber is running happily, it’s strong on the road. What could be? I thought.
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From: Jack
To: Rose
Jack,
I still think of that night…lying on that door in frigid Northern Atlantic waters. I hope you can forgive me for not scooting over and letting you have the other half of the door. I just needed to stretch out.
Love,
Rose

From: Poofy
To: Foxy

Fox of my heart, I know you’ve had a rough day. You went to work, slaved to install someone else’s computers for pay that doesn’t really seem worth it, and then got sick from the dust that was someone else’s job to clean up.

I know that I’m… not that happy with myself right now, and I can only imagine that you’re just as unhappy with me, if not more so.

I also know that today’s your birthday, and I know it shouldn’t be a crappy day. Today, of all days, you should be glad to be alive. Instead, you’re sick, tired, and frustrated.

… But … _I’m_ glad you’re alive. I’m glad that I had the chance to meet you. You’re my support, and I can only pray to whichever gods will listen that I can be the same for you.

I hope today turns into a wonderful day, foxy. I hope the entire world stops for just a moment at some point for you, because you deserve it. You are beautiful, inside and out, and I can think of no greater person on this earth, nor can I think of anyone I’d rather be with, no matter what (even if I epic fail. *winks*).

Happy Birthday, mi amor.