Love, It’s So Complicated

What a presumptuous title! It contains so many assumptions. It presumes I might have something worthwhile to say about a subject that has defied a universal definition for the ages. I have no academic qualifications. I am just a guy who has survived with means to an age which offers an opportunity and perspective for contemplation. So you can tune me out right here as I blather on, if you have anything better to do.

The subject is important to me because I have been in love with one person almost as long as I can remember anything. So, I am trying to understand it. You may have that thought about, or raised such questions about some of these issues yourself.

We know that there are all kinds of love. But in all of them that are real, there is a bedrock element. That person that you love is more important to you in crucial ways than your very own life is to yourself. We have seen many instances of that. But, in my view, that in no way discounts how you value yourself. I believe that you have to love yourself enough to consider yourself worthy of love. One requires that to be a healthy person. And that self-love is what gives value to what it is that you offer another person in loving them. And what you seek is a feeling toward yourself that mirrors what you have on offer. But the important thing is, your offer, based deep-seated feeling as it is, is not conditional. Even if the feeling is not reflected back, it remains on offer. The glorious thing is that the objects, if they are healthy, eventually discovering the unconditional nature of the love on offer, (that is so precious,) eventually succumb to a similar feeling in return. How can we help ourselves?

We see so many marriages ending in disappointment in our day. They may have been undertaken for different reasons, too many to enumerate. Certainly in many cases the partner chosen, or both partners, failed to find within themselves that devotion necessary to sustain a true love. We may have started out with high hopes. Many of us took the leap when we were young and not fully in charge, or capable of visioning what it was we really wanted or should want. Those subsequently departing those unions may have left behind a person who will maintain the love with which they entered the relationship. It will always be there regardless of their partner’s frailty. So many of us will settle for less, losing faith in, or hope of, finding the real thing. Those relationships will always have fragility, cemented by other elements, like concern for children, or the rational of economic circumstance or social position. But they would not always be able to withstand the challenge of a possible partnership that measures up to one of a kind to which we, most of us, aspire.

We are marrying later these days. We are trying out the living together before we take the nuptial step. Many find that step an unnecessary one and continue unions without the marriage. Many of our legal frameworks have made that step more irrelevant. Maybe that lessens the stresses and strains on the relationships, each partner retaining a sense of a freer choice of union. At their heart, the successful ones retain the crucial element of total commitment. It is this that for me is the focus. For me, therein resides the love of which I speak.

I am describing a world that does not exist everywhere. Our western world recognizes the reality of romantic love. In many cultures what I am describing is superseded by traditions and practises that are much more pragmatic, focusing primarily on procreation and the perpetuation of that existing tradition. It appears to me that these are most often societies which are so male-dominated that emancipation of women has not occurred in any real sense. Can true love exist in these environments? Why not? But, given human frailty, I fear that too much power in the hands of one of the parties can too easily corrupt the potentiality for a free union of souls.

Our priorities in life change on the go. We may start out in life focused primarily on a search for educational advancement, power, money and the like, at whatever scale in line with our aspirations. These are actually proxies in our minds for a capacity for self-determination, elements of our desire for personal control over our futures. We leave our interest in finding the right person to share those futures to a lower place on our agendas. But as we go forward, we find, increasingly, that worth of our achievement pale in our regard compared with having the right person at our side to share in our accomplishments. Failing that, the best that we have earned loses its savor, its taste, turns to ashes in our mouths. Indeed, we may have made short-term compromises that we come to bitterly regret. It is then we may recall the opportunities we may have missed to find that person. Who knows whether it is then too late? For some of us, if our desires are strong enough, it can never be too late. For some of us, the very wisest ones, it has always been high on the agenda. For some of us, the very fortunate, it proves to be not too late.

For the rest, life goes on to be led as best one can. I have been among the very fortunate. How about you? Tell all!