Am I Validated?
12 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in Momminess, My love affair with love
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. - Jane Austen
All of us at one point or another has laughed, cried and joked about love, but do we know what love really is?
As with anything, there are many different forms of love, love for ones parents, love for a child and perhaps love of a significant other. How do we measure all these different feelings?
For me, the love of a child comes the most naturally, it is unwavering and unconditional. This type of love is safe because, no matter what that child does, you will love them forever. For example, when I had my son Santino, I did not necessarily ‘know’ how to be a mother but, from the moment he was born, I knew that I had to love him more than any other. Was this thought the result of some type of social norm? The notion that we as parents are supposed to love our children? Some types of love creep up on you when you are not looking, but not this type. It is easy to love someone that you find no fault with.
When it comes to relationships, this love can be the most complex. When we first meet a person that we like, it is natural to want to impress them. As time goes on, we find ourselves with these feelings that we cannot explain. Then we start asking ourselves questions like, Is this Mr./Mrs. Right, Is there someone else that we are more connected to? This is when our feelings of love begin to get complex. For some, these complex feelings turn into complacency. We as humans, are creatures of habit and this notion does not stop when it comes to the love department.
Often times, people (such as my parents) stay within a relationship that they are not particularly happy with in order to become secure and safe. This partnership can be dangerous because love becomes lost among the crowd of quarrels and bickering. Love turns into contempt and then the relationship is ruined. So, do my parents love each other still? That I cannot say but, one should not sacrifice love for convenience.
Loving more than one person can also serve as a recipe for disaster. I believe, that when we love someone, a piece of our soul stays with them. As a result of this notion, it become harder to ‘fully’ love the next person that we hap upon. Our obligations and thoughts naturally take precedence over the ‘new’ love. This too, can cause ruptures in a relationship. There are some that say, ‘we cannot help who we fall in love with’. This may be true, but we must also be careful who we fall in love with because the results of a failed relationship can jade a person’s life forever.
What can I say? Love is a complex feeling that some never figure out. But, those of us who have not figured out what love is, remember that there are “many different types of love, as there are moments in time”. Each being different from the next and therefore love needs to be dealt with on a case to case basis.
Being in love is not a state of bliss, but a job that we all must work at.
For those of you who inspired me write this piece, Thank You (especially you, my loving son)
