[url=http://leafee.ocliw.com/]leeya[/url] recently writes about some of the deal breakers and the essential ingredients in a relationship. i would tend to agree with her that there are definitely deal breakers, lines that one cross, that once done can never be undone.
one of the biggest deal breakers for me is infidelity. if you were to kiss another person that’s grounds for an immediate break up. but there are other gray areas when it comes to infidelity. for example, there’s emotional cheating as well. if you share some kind of intimacy with another person that you are unwilling to share with me…that’s going to be a problem.
but leeya also rattles off a list of other essential ingredients necessary in a relationship.
“For me a mature loving relationship also requires honesty, trust, faithfulness, understanding, support and respect…love is not all you need.”
and this is where i violently disagree. yes, those virtues are important, but i guess i take a much simpler view about relationships. for me, love IS all you need. if you share a true love with another person then everything else slowly starts to melt away. call me a romantic, but if you truly love another person then all of the qualities of a successful relationship are born out of that love. you will obviously be honest and true and faithful and understanding and supportive and whatever else because you are driven to do all of these things because you love the other person.
i believe so strongly in love, that if you have a love so true, so pure, and so undeniably strong that everything else is just a formality. it’s implied that everything will work out if you truly love another because every breath that you take will be for that other person.
finding such a love is not an easy task, nor do i believe that it is common. but you know, you only need to find it once in your life and then you are set for life.
there was a girl who i dated for many, many years. i had loved her like i had loved no other. i thought that the love that we shared is what inspired the greek comedies, cheesy love songs, and romance novels. i thought that our love was so pure, so strong, that nothing could get in our way. maybe it was my naivete, maybe it was just because we were so young that we didn’t know what we had…or maybe i was just wrong. but after all those years of dating it didn’t work out. we broke up.
after that i was devastated. my belief in love was shattered. i thought that it was all a big crock. what is this thing called love? it’s a big sham. something that somebody made up to give lonely people hope. i was bitter, jaded, and angry.
it took me a long time to realize that whatever we had, our love was not strong enough to overcome the obstacles that we faced. it wasn’t so much a matter of whether or not i was attentive enough or that she was faithful enough or anything else. what it really boiled down to what that whatever bond of love that we had, it just wasn’t strong enough for us to stay together. we didn’t have the tools necessary to fix our relationship and we weren’t willing to try to do so. we were just ill-equipped.
it took me a long time to believe in love again. i started to believe that i had lost my only opportunity and that now i was destined to a life of lonely misery. it was a dark time for me.
but love did find me again. and it filled my heart with its joyous song. i had been converted again and my belief in it has never wavered since. see, the thing about love is that it inspires you to be greater than you are. i don’t believe that love should ever die in a relationship. because once the love is gone…what is left? a commitment? an obligation? what’s the point? why bother?
to me it doesn’t really matter if you have all these other qualities in a relationship, if i’m in a loveless relationship it means that it wasn’t meant to be. it means that there’s something wrong. how can you stray so far from what brought you together? and if you have strayed that far, why bother to continue to live diverging lives?
are all of these romantic notions of love unrealistic? i don’t think so. i choose to believe in love. and i believe that love is all you need.
is this why i’m still single? =P
Love is a funny thing. It means so many different things to so many different people. Who’s to say that people that fart in public and flick boogers at each other aren’t in love? [Personally, that’s not for me.] Maybe it’s what they each want and what they offer each other that makes each of the them feel loved.
At the same time, these rather strange rituals of love might be appropriate for the time in their lives. Maybe they are in Kindergarten & sharing their first kiss in the sandbox. When at another point in time, they would never subject themselves to such standards of love like when they’re old and wrinkly and it’d be lucky if they could control their farts without letting their bladder get the best of them.
It may not seem like love to us, but it is love to them. Whether this love lasts is fodder for another entry another time.
Tata!
this is the reason why I brought up the essential ingredients of love. some people don’t see that and that is what I see in their place…crude mistreatment of each other. and you would think that after years and years they’ll see…but they don’t. they’re not even married, they have nothing to hold them together and yet they stayed. they felt that they love therefore they can forgive and overlook the obvious flaws. and I still don’t understand why.
I’m basically stating what I think are the essentials in a healthy loving relationship. I’m not trying to apply my experience or value on anyone. I’m being realistic and pointing out why I feel the way I do. that love sometimes doesn’t conquer all and that it can be as ugly as you think it is beautiful.
By the way, I forgot to mention that love hits love and make love beg for forgiveness. Is that love?
uhhh, i think what you describe is just immature and crude. and anyone who tolerates that…well, quite honestly, deserves it.
and just because you’ve been with someone for a long time doesn’t mean by default that you two are in love. i’ve seen people, married couples for example, who are in loveless marriages for years and years. why do they stick together? i’m sure they have their reasons. maybe they are too afraid to be single. maybe they feel this is the best they can do. maybe they’ve been with the person for so long that they just can’t imagine life without them. maybe they are in love and none of this stuff bothers them. i’m sure that people have their reasons for what they do. i may not understand them, but i respect their decision.
you can’t apply your own experiences and values on other people and expect them to always agree with you. that’s the beauty of being different from other people. all you can really do is observe the world and make determinations of what you want for yourself and strive to achieve that.
for me, when it comes to relationships, all i need is love and everything else will come into place.
Okay, do you consider calling the person you love “bitch†in front of their friends…love? How about them flicking their booger at you…love? Or constantly farting loudly in a room full of family and friends…love? Or accidentally hitting them and laughing at it…love? Or ordering them around…love? Or keeping secret from them…love? Or giving them money to gamble off…love? And do you think being with someone for over 10 years just an infatuation?
Yes, I’ve seen this so call blind love…and man, it’s disgusting.
people throw the word “love” around like a used piece of tissue. the thing is most of us tend to fall deeply and quickly into infatuation. this infatuation is not necessarily a bad thing, but we do need to see if it will mature into a real love.
but when people say that “love is blind” i see it more as support for my thesis that provided that you have love, all other things will work itself out.
love is blind because it transcends any problems you have because you are motivated to resolve any problems you have because you really love that other person. love is blind because you don’t see the faults of others as faults, but much more like a mole. it’s just a part of the person. in the same vein, love is blind because your feelings for that person can cloud your judgement to think rationally…but when it comes to affairs of the heart rational thought has no place reserved for it.
i don’t think anyone is ever a fool for being in love. love is the greatest thing that one can give to another and receive from another.
i think it is more commonly our folly to mistake infatuation with love.
and don’t get me wrong, love is most certainly a two way street. just because one person loves another unconditionally doesn’t mean the relationship will work. the truest and purest forms of love is where it is unconditional and reciprocal.
can two people who are in love not know how to treat each other in the way that is consistent with a successful relationship? absolutely. but if their love is true, they will learn. i’m not painting a rosy picture here and saying that you can only have a true blue love if everything is peachy. i’m saying that if you do have that love, you’ll learn to conquer anything that stands before you.
I said a mature loving relationship “also” requires…, I never said you don’t need love. Love is the reason why you’re in a relationship in the first place…at least it should be. Yet, I’ve seen people who say they’re in love and I’ve seen how inappropriately they treated each other. They call it love but many may call it something else. They’re foolishly blinded by what they think is love—hence the expression “love is blindâ€. For a fool in love, of course love is all they need. But how long will that love last…how long will it takes before they realized “hey, this doesn’t feel rightâ€?