“Love has got complicated, tied
up with promises, bruised with plans, dogged with an ending that nobody wants-
when all love is, is what always is- that you look at me and want me, and I
don’t turn away. “
-Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook
In
a relationship, love is supposed to be the glue that keeps everything together.
Regardless of the differences between two people, be it principles or values,
gender or race, love is supposed to make everything work. After all, love is
the usual reason why people enter long-term, committed serious relationships
with each other.
We
all know that relationships end for too many reasons. It can never be just one
reason. Distrust, deceit, abuse, infidelity, indifference, lack of passion or
just plain boredom – you name it. Couples seem to rationalize the break up by
enumerating, in the end, all of the reasons why the relationship could have
never worked out. However, the main reason most people point to is that they
fell out of love or there wasn’t enough love or there was no love. The premise
is simple: Without love, it ends. No questions asked.
But
what about those relationships that have love but have just gotten too
complicated? Why is love not enough to keep them together?
The
entirety of the situation would have to mean that love was never, in the first
place, enough. Healing, forgiveness, compromise, extraordinary efforts,
unconditional. These are all part of love’s package. We look past all the
faults and shortcomings of the people we love. Not because we have to, not
because we want to but because we choose to. We take that dive into oblivion,
into the unknown, into unfamiliar territory. And we have this idiotic notion
that we’ll make it out alive or unscathed.
We
dive in, without thinking. Unarmed, unaware and without caution we take that
plunge. We lay down all our expectations at the door and walk in because love
seems too alluring to let it just go by. We immerse ourselves in it, forgetting
who we are, where we’ve come from and what we want. We get acquainted with love, we familiarize
ourselves with its temper, its moods, its attitude and we try to make sense of
this wondrous entity, the best thing that’s ever happened to us.
Time
passes.
And love becomes too familiar
and less and less interesting. Wham! Then
we remember. We remember all the baggage we left at the door before we met
love. Everything turns ugly. We realize that we’ve given up too much for love
that we’ve forgotten who we are. Fight back. Retaliate. It’s the only way to
get even. We then stab love with expectations, hold it down with commitment,
poke it with promises, drown it in regret and asphyxiate it with jealousy.
Some people beat the love out of
the relationship, to the point that they drive it out or even kill it. And
that’s when couples decide to call it quits. But there are some couples, who
instead of driving love out choose to lock it away somewhere, ball and chain
and all. For future use, maybe. Love is then kept a prisoner. A hostage used by
both sides to keep what’s left of the relationship alive.
Love becomes game. A prize. The
trophy to the one who keeps the key. The two of you are forced to play this
charade where there can only be outcomes: 1. Love is granted freedom and
everything falls back into place, or 2. You kill love, eventually, and a part
of yourselves die with it.
The charade starts with one
pretending to forget love while looking for temporary fixes to make forgetting
easier. The other party accepts the challenge by playing the same charade. The
key word: pretend. The clincher: to see who will crack first. See, the person
who eventually admits that everything was just pretend loses. The winner,
however, gets to decide whether love is freed or if the charade should
continue. The danger: love is forgotten when the game is played too long. It
dies and the relationship dies with it.
Love is not enough. For those
who seek forever and happily ever after, love will only disappoint you as it is
imperfect. For those who seek passion, love becomes complacent. For those who seek
something temporal, love will linger. For those who seek companionship, love is
unnecessary. For those who seek comfort, love is too unpredictable. For those
who want to heal, love scars.
Love is not enough because it always
gives us more. Overwhelming. Breathtaking. We can’t handle the sheer intensity
that we are forced to package it into what we think love should be. It becomes
too personal that for other people, it becomes distorted and impossible to
recognize. So we cope. We try to recognize love by making the package prettier.
This is the time when all the other accessories of love come into play.
Commitment, expectations, promises, romance, trust, loyalty, compromise, etc. We
put all of these wrappings on the package and we think we’re finally happy.
Then, one by one, the wrappings fade or get soiled or just fall off and love
again becomes unrecognizable and we are again disappointed.
Love is never enough because we
can never be content with what we have. Its human nature to want something that
we don’t have and to take for granted the things that we do. We become too
selfish, too self-serving, too blind and too arrogant.
Love is not enough because we
choose to not love enough. Not enough to overlook the shortcomings. Not enough
to forgive. Not enough to keep ourselves from falling out of love. Not enough
to keep us from wanting to be with other people. Not enough to keep us content
with what we have. Not enough to make us happy. Not enough. Just not enough. We
choose to not make it enough.
Love is not enough. And we have
nobody but ourselves to blame.
“It is also
good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another
human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to
us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other
work is merely preparation.”
-Rainer Maria
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
