I am doubting that love truly exists. At least the romantic love, which all Americans hype up, where if you love someone enough, you’ll try to make it work and because you love them things do work out. The idea is that you’d rather be with them, than be alone and/or with someone else. You care enough about their feelings to compromise.
My friend, who just got married three months ago, can’t seem to have a conversation with her husband without arguing, even when they try not to. I’ve had two friends break off their engagements. Several parents of my friends and my own, argue a lot. A couple parents even got divorced, now that the kids are no longer there. I had my first “real” relationship within the past year, and now I’m really just friends with my ex, even though we still like each other.
I’ve seen relationship issues in the past. But that was in school and weren’t serious relationships…plus those relationships weren’t mine. I always thought that once we were past that phase of our lives, we would find someone who we would really love, get married, and live happily ever after….if we wound up with the right person.
I wonder if people are so individualistic that it in the long it never works out, and there really isn’t a "right" person. And that the only reason people stay together is because of some need that has nothing to do with love, like a desire for kids, financial support, cultural values, or the fear of being alone.
Am I starting to doubt something that exists but is just hard to find? Or am I just growing up and becoming more realistic about life?
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3 comments:
Interesting post. I used to believe that love was a sham and people in love were stupid and deluding themselves. I still believe this about teenagers in love. Of course, now that I am currently in love, it's hard to maintain that. If I end up single again someday, I'll probably go back to the cynical view.
Love, whatever it is, doesn't last. That much is certain. If you're well-adjusted and compatible with someone, you can make it last longer by turning it into a healthy, good-natured, caring co-dependent relationship. But love goes in stages. There's passionate excitement and then there's taking someone for granted, which you have to try really hard to avoid. And a lot of times people will stick together for non-love reasons. You almost need to have those to stick together.
One reason the divorce rate used to be lower, I suspect, was that people simply didn't consider it an option. Why would you do that to your kids? There was a stigma. And besides, who were you to expect that your marriage would always be happy? Jokes about unhappy marriages, and fat wives throwing rolling pins at unhappy, adulterous husbands go back hundreds of years. But people used to accept the idea that marriage would eventually settle into drudgery. Now people feel entitled to be happy forever. So they keep trying to start over.
People aren't perfect, and eventually you'll get bored of them. If you're lucky, you won't get sick of them, but maybe you will. Just remember that you're probably pretty irritating too, and count your blessings that they're not too sick of you. Maybe then you'll realize that you've got a good thing going. It may not be burning love, but that's the way it goes.
Hope this helps.
I am too haughty to not literally and bluntly answer the questions posed (see my comment to your previous post, too).
Does love necessarily not last? If love has not worked in the past, so what? You are jumping to conclusions.
Arguments and love are not mutually exclusive. Being happy with someone and being in love with someone are diferent things.
People change constantly over the course of their life and loves, literally. Your cells die and are replaced. People in proximity are less likely to "grow apart", and since very few couples work in the same place on the same job, work will always provide stimuli that can drive people's interests and personalities apart.
Think of arguments between lovers as hiccups, points where people diverge and come back together in some workable agreement.
I guess what I want to say is that love, if and when it ends, doesn't magically end. Nothing about the human body or the human experience is literally magical. There is a physical reason, locked somewhere in that mess of neurons you call a brain and that katamari of experience you call a body, for everything you do and don't think and feel. Why does love end? I don't know.
Just don't expect anecdotal evidence to tell you anything worth knowing, ever.
People work hard on their relationships for two reasons. One, it's worth keeping. Two, effort works. The details of why, the rates of success, reasons for diminishing returns on effort applied ... these can be argued over. But love, like Middle Earth, is worth fighting for, and I don't think that fight is futile.
Also, unlike Middle Earth, it exists.
Hi Zack, Welcome to my blog. Yep I know you're one of Kenny's avid fans. Well I hope you guys are right that as long as both people in the relationship works on it, it'll last.
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