We all have experience loving human beings (with varying degrees of success), but what about loving those who are not quite of this world?

If you have had the dubious good fortune of falling in love with a creature of the water—a mermaid, mer-woman or merman—your path will not be simple. For the roads you follow together will be of water, not dirt and just as changeable.

Just as the sea harbors another world entirely beneath its rolling surface, so do the women born of it. If you love one of them, open your eyes when you go swimming. You will find riches greater by far than sunken treasure.

Study the moon to learn how her hips dance and trace their pattern in watery shadows.

Know that she, like Melusina (and nothing at all like Disney’s princess), might always need to keep some grottos to herself. Resist the urge to peak through locked doors and trust that the water will not steal her from you.

To love a mermaid, make your peace with the forces of water. Submit to storms with grace and to floods with humor—she will love you for it.

Bring her seashells for her toes and sea grass for her hair. Bake her sand cookies and throw an underwater tea party. Drink in her playfulness—the immortality of her joy—as she swims with dolphins.

A woman born of water knows that no pleasure can quite match that of gliding into the moon’s reflection, reemerging to shake drops of starlight from her mane.

Do you?

If you love this kind of woman, remember that she will always be a mermaid. No matter how many years she walks upon land, this fact will not change.

But if she loves you, those years will not be a sacrifice.

And if you truly love her, you will understand that the rocking of waves and thunder of cascades are a lullaby that will never leave her, for it sings in the marrow of her bones.

To love a mermaid, you will need to soften the lines between reality and myth. Embrace the in-between waves where your lover floats. Let her rest on your shoulders when that water becomes too rough. Then let her tumble from your arms when she craves it again.

Ebb and flow.

Do you love a mermaid? Then tell her the moon-dance of her hips is like oxygen—dip your fingers into the night and write your love in impermanent strokes upon her skin—open your eyes wide and dive in.

Relephant Read:

Mermaids Are Real.

Author: Toby Israel

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: Wikipedia Commons