For this discussion, I believe I will focus on something I’ve been thinking about recently. “What is true love?”
Relationships cover a wide spectrum of interaction and emotions. Interaction can range from a happily married couple and slide all the way to the negative end of the spectrum where two people find themselves to be mortal enemies. Emotion is fickle. You never quite know how you’ll feel about someone from one day to the next.
My sister recently stated, “It’s impossible to love fully and to protect one’s heart at the same time. Sometimes this stinks, but to never give love a chance would stink even more!” I agree with this 100%.
Peter Wolf of the J. Geils band sings about this. Their 1980′s song declares, “Love Stinks!” I respectfully disagree. Love does NOT stink. What does stink is when love is lost due to an evolving life experience. No two people have the same exact experience or reactions to events in their life. This single fact can and often does change the nature of a relationship such that a love cannot be maintained.
Sometimes, love is felt, but never reciprocated. This lack of returned love evokes negative emotion which affects our position on the “sliding scale of love”. Don’t kid yourself. Nobody is immune to love. We crave it. We need it. We can’t get enough of it, but there never seems to be enough to sate our hunger. When you don’t have food, you feel it in your stomach. When you don’t get enough love, you feel it in your heart.
When love is given freely and returned in kind… which is to say, when you and your lover are kind and respectful of each others’ wants and needs… a flood of positive emotion can fill you and overwhelm you. Your position on the “scale of love” can slide all the way to the top and give you untold feelings of happiness and contentment. Is this “true love?” Some people think so.
In rare cases, a major life changing event can leave a loved one behind to wallow in hatred or self-pity. When negative emotions intrude on love, it can cause a downward spiral from lover to “EX” status. Love can crash just as quickly as it blossoms. Many relationships cannot survive a mild spring shower let alone gale force winds that can blow your heart about on the open ocean of life.
A perfectly matched couple who loves each other dearly will find a way to weather the storms of change. With each change, their love grows.
Do I love you more than life itself or do you make me want to vomit when I see you? I don’t know, let me check my daily horoscope in the newspaper and I’ll get back to you.
So, what is the answer to my original query? Our experiences related to this topic have varying degrees of severity and are typically interpreted as different things. However, with all things considered, I believe that ALL love is “True Love.” Even a little bit of love is still love. Think about it.
