For something touted to be the purest and most selfless of emotions, love can be irredeemably selfish and tainted.
I have observed that a good number of times, this thing called love usually ends in premium, hot tears. This is especially worse in times like ours where there are “plenty more fish in the sea.”
Hurtful words are said.
Even more hurtful things are done and just like that, love commits hara-kiri.
Over time, I have observed that sometimes unrequited love seems more peaceful. It is less involving. You expect nothing and seeing you are as visible as a fly on a wall to them, they expect nothing of you. This makes it easier to navigate.
However, with the regular type of love, things get a little murky.
You expect things from them, like words of kindness, thoughtfulness, and their presence at the barest minimum. When all those things are missing, a slight sinking pain settles in the center of your being.
After observing the dynamics of love in this current clime and how people fall in and out of love in just two months, I questioned if whatever it is we do these days was really love if it had an expiry date.
Permanence was and should be a critical ingredient in the elixir of love, right?
Wasn’t that what all those “happily ever endings” were all about? Living happily long after you’ve galloped into the sunset.
Why then does love kind of wane after you have galloped into the figurative tangerine sunset?
That aside, there were some things about “love” that stood out like an orange suit at Wall Street. First, it seemed people treated people they claimed to love with less decency than say, friends or acquaintances. This is not really observable with new couples. Those ones haven’t really broken into the relationship. This situation is more obvious after the honeymoon stage or during fights.
In the battle of tongues, both parties aim to draw blood. While they apologize and make up — with gifts, horizontally or otherwise — those words leave mental and emotional keloids. This is also tenable in friendships and familial relationships. It leads you to wonder:
How can a heart that holds so much love for someone grow below a tongue that drips excoriating words on that same person?
If love is kind, why do the people we love tear us down (and vice versa)?
Why do relationships seem simple on paper but as complicated as an underground mafia network in reality?
If love is not self-seeking, then why do people claim to love someone and then hold them so tightly they break?
If love is not proud, why then do people in love play the who-will-cave-first-and-apologize game after a fight?
I like to think of break-ups as cleaning up an enormous pile of shit. It is always a messy business, no matter how you approach it.
Someone’s feelings are going to be hurt at some point, not necessarily at the time of the break-up. It might happen when you see them moving on and recapturing happiness, while your life looks like a kindergarten art project. However, what I don’t understand is how someone can be your solar system this week and after the break-up, they become the next bad thing after Covid-19.
Why does the head of love easily flip over to the tail of hate immediately after a couple breaks up? I understand that it might have a lot to do with the break-up, but feelings don’t self-destruct that fast, do they?
Why do people claim to love someone but never really treat that person right until they leave or worse, dead? Why do we become less critical and more understanding when the other person is nowhere to be found? What is it about death that makes us more appreciative of friends and loved ones? Why do we only give people the roses and kind words they deserve when they are pushing daisies?
I believe when you really love someone, you have to be prepared to let them go if you realize that:
a.) you are not right for them
b.) you are not the kind or color of happiness they need/want
Many people disagree with this because in the possessive and covetous world we live in, love is more about holding on and trying to love square pegs into round holes. Love makes you better and better includes changing fundamental things about you, right?
The idea of love is perfect. Unfortunately, human beings are inherently flawed (and that’s okay) and this makes the execution dicey. Many people think the L-word is a spice that makes everything better. That somehow personal issues and flaws disappear when someone is loved (right).
“All I need to be happy now is the right (wo)man”
“What you need is someone to take care of you.”
“What (s)he needs is a (wo)man and you’ll see everything about him/her will change.”
While love has its perks, you cannot love your way out of fundamental issues that you or the other person may have. You just have to put in the work on your own. Love comes from a place of fullness. You cannot give what you don’t have. When you don’t love yourself (well enough), you cannot love someone else the way they deserve to be loved. Love is not something that fills the emptiness. Neither is it the joining of two incomplete individuals to form a whole. This, to a large extent, is dependency. This faulty definition of love is what makes love feel like a game of sore losers. Love is a fullness shared between two whole, complete people. It is a give-and-give situation where both parties pour unashamedly into each other through their words and actions as opposed to waiting to be poured into.
Some months ago, I watched an interview of a couple who had been married for 75 years. These two were adorable. From the banter, shared jokes, and playful chemistry, it was obvious to see that after all these years, these two still loved and cherished each other. The honeymoon never ended. As the lady laughingly said her husband was always after her body with a shine in her eyes, you realize the love these two share, as paradoxical as it may sound, includes and transcends the physical. While advising young people on how to make the best of marriage, they gave a few insightful tips like making each other laugh, not going to bed angry, etc. However, the lady said something that stuck with me:
“Be kind to each other….”
No-brainer, right?
But very few people actually practice this. It is quite easy to be kind to that homeless person on the street, that friend grieving the death of a loved one or a stray cat. The story changes when you are angry at your significant other for doing something wrong.
The test of kindness is not in being kind when times are right; the test of kindness is being kind when being unkind seems right. At those times, it is easy, dare I say, justified to be unkind. We talk to them and about them in ways we would have never done in the beginning. Then, we take their mistakes, magnify them and throw them in their face. We shoot verbal bullets that do irreparable emotional damage. At that moment, you forget that this person, just like that overworked clerk at the department store, that busted-up cat or frazzled boss deserves your kindness.
It is ok to get angry at the other person when they wrong you. It is normal to not be able to stand them after a spat. But in that time, it is necessary to remember how much you love this person and how their actions and mistakes are imperfections that make them who they are. To paraphrase her words while recounting issues she had with her husband, they might annoy you but you still love them. When you let that righteous anger get the best of (the both of) you, you become sore losers in the game of love.
Disclaimer: This post is not encouraging you to tolerate abuse or stay in relationships where you are constantly taken for granted
P.S: The couple passed away in May 2020 because of COVID. Their marriage was almost 78 years old.
Originally published on Medium.
Like what you read? Check out The Unicorn Called Unconditional Love for more musings on love.
If you like reviews, check out Into the Psychology of Dolarhyde from Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon and When God Builds a Church: Review of The Unholy (2021)
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