This is the root of the problem.
I like that for a first sentence to this narrative, but really I have no idea what the problem is, which is why I’m writing this. Maybe by the end I’ll have some idea or will have learned something about myself. I doubt it, since I have lived in my shoes for 28 years and this will probably only be around a page long.
I’d like to think that everything happens for a reason. I thought I did think that until I met a man who told me how he had married his first girlfriend because he had been dating her for over eight years. Even when he was getting married he knew he was making a mistake, but figured he could just get divorced. He said back then he was a fool with no purpose. To which I said, “Everything happens for a reason.” He rolled his eyes at that and then I thought about it and added, “Ok Everything happens, there is no reason but we attach one to it later with hindsight.” He agreed to this with much more ease.
So here I am a fool with no purpose. I’m sure I have some purpose, although it is unclear to me at this point. I used to think the purpose of life was that there was no purpose. The purpose was just to live life and experience as much as possible, so that by the end you would have learned something really meaningful. That’s still a perfectly good theory. But here is what has thrown a major wrench in my theory: love.
Lately I have been confused by love. I don’t understand it anymore. I thought I’d had a clear understanding of it, but it is all jumbled in my head.
I’ve got this one part of it down cold. Love is unconditional. By that I mean that when you really love someone you love them for everything they are and aren’t. You love them because they make you laugh and cry, because they are so smart and stupid, because they have always been there for you and have let you down. You love them because you do. I always think back to the way I love my sister or mother. I can argue with them, hate them, feel like they know nothing about me, but at the end of the day I know that I will always be there for them and vice versa. This is love in its purest form.
I hoped that this type of love translated into romantic love. But I don’t know if it does. I don’t understand when enough is enough. You can fall in love with someone hopelessly, but what if they don’t share your ideals? What if you compromise nearly everything that you imagined the love of your life would be? What if you love Halloween, but they think it is sacrilegious? What if you want children and they don’t? What if they spend all your money, but you are a penny pincher? What if you don’t believe in God and they are at church every Sunday? What if you love your family, but they hate theirs and yours? What happens then? Do you erase all the moments you shared with one another? Do you forget that this person made you feel that there was nothing else in the world that mattered outside of you? Or do you stick it out and work through the differences?
You’ve fallen in love and you know that this person for whatever reason makes you feel at peace. You can’t even explain why. There are no concrete reasons for it because on paper this person is the opposite of what you always imagined. But yet, you feel that love that everyone talks about. And some might say, “Well you aren’t really in love then. There are too many differences; it will never work out.” Ok but love has no empirical implications, if you can’t see it or measure it then you wouldn’t be able to explain or rationalize it.
The other part that confuses me is why people give up on love so easily. They get bored, their minds drift and suddenly the very person that was the “one” is a bore. If romantic love was really unconditional then how does this happen? It happens to everyone. There are affairs, deceptions and betrayals. These things happen between lovers who were so intimate with one another. This happens to someone whose heart you should have protected as you would have your own. It happened to me. Are people too selfish to be capable of unconditional love? I’m afraid of the answer. I’m afraid of love.
The difference between romantic love and love of your family/friends is sex.
Sex complicates love. Sex taints love. Sex should be the ultimate expression of love, but it really is just sex for most people. Sex makes unconditional love impossible. Why? This is because sex is possible with numerous lovers. You can only have one mother, one sister, one father, one brother (in most cases). So you necessarily wouldn’t be afraid that your mother will go out and get a new daughter, or your sister would go off and see another sister behind your back. But your lover can love anyone else. And it is that thought that the one we love and have given this unconditional love to isn’t giving it back. But again is the paradox, because if romantic love was really unconditional then that wouldn’t matter.
