Kevin Costner article in Parade Magazine July 20, 2008

These Kevin Coster quotes are from an article in July 20, 2008 Parade Magazine.

“I wanted love. I just never thought that love would come to me a second time.”
I think EVERYONE wants love. I certainly know that I always wanted it even though I doubted my worthiness and sometimes questioned if I was capable of loving.

“Falling in love is a really tricky thing. If you pretend you’re in love when you’re really not, it ends up bloody. It took me a long time before I said ‘I love you’ to her, a long time.”
I agree that falling in love is “tricky.” I feel it becomes even more confusing with today’s tendency to rush into intimacy which makes it difficult to distinguish between feelings of love and lust.

“I was always interested in girls. I just didn't have any luck with them."
I was ALWAYS interested in girls, even when I was very little when boys were supposed to dislike girls. But I was also afraid of girls and felt very awkward and uncomfortable around them. As I got older, I “worshipped” them from afar, putting women up on a pedestal. I had secret crushes on certain girls and ladies, NEVER acting on my feelings for fear of ridicule and embarrassment. Better to be lonely and alone than to be totally humiliated for believing that ANY girl or woman might be interested in me.

Amazingly, Costner had little experience with romance. His only girlfriend was Cindy Silva, a fellow student at Cal State, Fullerton. “Cindy was the only girl I had ever dated. I thought she was beautiful. I was honestly surprised that she liked me. I was shocked, actually.”
I didn’t have “little” experience with romance, I had NONE. I believed if I acted on my interest in women, I would be thought a fool for thinking that any woman would be interested in being with me, so I “played it safe” and ignored my feelings, pretending to have no interest in the opposite sex.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘love’ with someone, because that makes things trickier.”
When I did begin having relationships with women, I NEVER used the word ‘love.’

“We’re afraid of a lot of things in life. It’s part of the human condition. What do we fear? Love? Failure? Telling the truth about ourselves? I think we don’t show people all we truly are because we’re afraid that if they actually know everything about us, they won’t love us. I’m as guilty of that as anyone.”
Although I never feared love, I do fear failure. And I agree with Costner; I am afraid to totally expose my true self – which leaves me TOTALLY vulnerable. I reveal different parts of my private self to different people, depending upon the relationship. I have revealed more of myself to Fran than I have with ANYONE, and amazingly she still likes and accepts me!

Not wanting to lose her, Kevin got Christine’s phone number through a friend and called her the next day.
I remembered Fran from the yearly PSERS retirement informational meetings she conducted at Dallastown. I attended those meetings regularly from my 29th year of teaching on (anticipating a possible 30 and out option). When I met her at my retirement exit meeting in Red Lion, and then actually talked to her for over an hour after the meeting, I did NOT want to lose contact with her. So after that meeting, I emailed her questions about my retirement situation and gradually steered the emails to more personal correspondence with the hope of eventually meeting again face to face. During my recovery from my back surgery over that summer, we exchanged 379 emails! We finally met on Labor Day weekend of 2006, almost 3 months after we had talked at my retirement exit meeting, when I asked her to walk along the river in Harrisburg. Fortunately, for me, Fran was always prompt at responding to my emails and seemed to enjoy the email exchange. She confessed to me later that she wasn't sure I would EVER ask her out. :)

“I knew I was in love.”
When I finally knew I was in love with Fran (September 1, 2007 - almost a year to the day after we took our first walk together), I HAD to tell her. I had waited a LONG time to experience love, but maybe God was saving the best for last.