What is love?

"Love," perhaps the single greatest element in human nature that makes us human.  Great tragedies have been written about it; songs have sang about its mythical powers; the greatest and humblest of men have been free to partake in its sweetness, but in all its glory, love is a mystery.  People are still baffled, confused, heartbroken, inspired, reborn, made whole, and brought to their knees by it.  

LOVE IS NOT A MATERIAL POSSESSION

To this day I am still in awe of the power of love; I do not profess to know its many secrets, but I have realized what it is not.  I think the one mistake people make is think of love as a material possession, i.e., it is something to own and once you have it, you get to keep it forever like the house that you've paid your mortgage on.  Not so at all!  Love instead is like a living, growing being such as a tree that requires continued nourishment, water, sunshine, patience, and tender loving care.  And like a tree, should you ever stop providing these things, the tree would wither and slowly die.  Of course, the stronger and bigger the tree, the more resilient it would be to the harshness of neglect, but the younger it is the easier it will perish in the face of any neglect.    

I realized this when reflecting on my personal life and those of the people around me.  I treated love like a material possession.  I had tried to be someone else so that I could satisfy the man that I wanted to marry.  I got what I wanted; we got married because I was very good at making promises that I only halfheartedly committed to.  I thought, "just be like this for a bit longer until we get married, then everything would be fine once I have him totally to myself."  Well, four stormy years later filled with tears, heartbreak, and disappointment on both sides, all that is left is our pending divorce.  I have no regrets only the sadness that I was not truer to myself and him from the beginning, and in the end both of us were badly hurt.  It took four long years to realize this.  If I had been truer to myself from the beginning I would have realized that he was not the right person for me.  And we would never have gotten married.

But I'm a better person for it.  I see friends and family committing the same deadly error as I did.  They think of their other half as a material possession.  In the beginning, passionate love fills their heart and they are willing to capture the moon for the other person.  But once married and years pass perhaps, their burning passion seems to fizzle out.   There is no longer mutual nourishment of their love through that burning eagerness to know the other person through deep communication, understanding, regard, and respect.  Most couples don't even think it's necessary anymore because, after all, "we know each other already!"  Soon they replace that bond of love between them with daily chores such as tending to their children, fulfilling grocery lists, paying bills on time, "keeping up" with friends over the weekend.  

And worse still they believe that sex is sufficient to restrengthen the bond between them. So instead of engaging in the acts that would actually nourish their love, such as growing together, gaining a deeper understanding of the other person's changing aspirations and desires, they instead let these other things take hold because it's simply easier.  And when cracks in the relationship leads to arguments and exchange of hurtful words that wounds the other deeply, resentment builds and defensive walls come up that make deep communication even more difficult.  So couples even start seeking out distracting things to fill up their relationship so that they don't have to go through the oftentimes painful process of understanding the roots of their problems.  

LOVE MEANS GROWING TOGETHER

We as people continue to grow and change throughout our lives because we constantly confront new challenges and problems.  If we didn't grow we would be dead.  And so if two people do not grow together they will simply grow apart.  And one day you will wake up and find yourself sleeping next to a stranger, who would probably feel the same way about you.  

How to grow together?  Well the one mistake I see most is that people think that once they "possess" the other person, that their job is done in getting to know that person.  They see the other person as static, unchanging.  My parents often feel they know me so well because after all they have known me for over 30 years, but the fact of years is irrelevant. It's what have you been doing to get to know the other person in these years that matter. When you become a couple, you confront so many new challenges such as rearing children, sickness, mortgage, career development, financial problems, aging, weight gain, even mid-life crisis!  People are changed by these challenges; they think differently, they learn new things, they develop new priorities, and if as a couple you don't actively engage in this change with your other half, any journey you don't make together is a journey that will bring you further apart.  

LOVE IS FREELY GIVEN AND TAKEN AWAY

The second mistake I made was that you can never possess love, it's freely given and received.  No one can ever force it.  Even if you are in a marriage, even if you are bound together by children, mortgage, taxes, financial assets, family, your credit card bills, etc, love cannot be possessed.  The best thing you can ever do is provide it nourishment- water, sunshine, and tender loving care and hope that the other person reciprocates in kind. Moreover, you can never provide these things with the intent of being rewarded back; you must provide it freely and unconditionally.  Why?  Because if you have an ulterior motive to giving, you will not give freely and wholeheartedly, you would only give with the calculative intent of getting back, and the receiver would feel it, they would be able to feel the insincerity, and they would reply in kind, and your love would be marred by insincerity and guardedness.  

It's interesting how our society has set up barriers to deny this truth, i.e., marriage, social customs, rule of law, etc.  Let's take marriage; marriage is essentially a social contract wherein the couple makes a public declaration and people attend to witness this declaration to ensure that you keep to your commitments.  But it's skin deep; if it was really that effective there wouldn't be so many affairs and divorce settlements.  When couples stay together for ulterior motivations, i.e., social pressure, children, financial security, lack of self-esteem, social prestige etc, as oppose to what is true in their hearts, bad things happens.  There is the potential for abuse (physical, emotional, psychological), adultery, resentment, and the relationship could become a sickness that rots your core.  

Of course, there are important reasons to stay together such as "for the sake of the children," but if that unity creates conflict, familial dysfunction, deception, I can't imagine that would benefit anyone in any way.  Would it not be better if the parents can come to a rationale understanding that they no longer care for each other, for whatever reasons, and come to an amicable separation whereby there is little to no resentment.  In this kind of scenario, the parents could still communicate and work out their differences for the sake of their children, they could share their children in a loving and responsible way, wouldn't this be better for a child's development?  Ideally, the only thing the child sees is that his/her parents no longer live or love each other as they used to, but they still love him.  

Adultery (sneaking behind your spouse's back and having a relationship with someone else) occurs because people are conflicted between what is in their hearts and what they think they "should" do.  In fact, the real problem isn't that "jezebel or jezeboy!"  For the cheating spouse to engage in adultery means that that spouse was already dissatisfied with the relationship in some way.  In other words, serious problems were already there, adultery is simply the tangible expression of that problem.  The more likely culprit is that the couple just simply grew apart, they treated their relationship like a possession instead of a growing tree and stopped understanding each other so that one day they woke in the same bed as perfect strangers.  I am not saying that ethics, moral obligations, etc should all be thrown out of the window, or that it wouldn't hurt like hell when your partner no longer loves you as before, but if we are individuals that come to the realization that love is not a possession, that it is just as freely given as taken away, then we would all develop more enriched partnerships.  For one, we would actually be more grateful for the love we receive and also less damaged when it is no longer given.  We would realize that both people are responsible for the breakdown and hence no one is the victim.  In fact, when no one feels to be the victim, both can actually be more responsible and effective in patching up the relationship.  And usually in these circumstances, couples are able to nip problems in the bud before they commit acts that go beyond irreconcilable differences.   

Our hearts never lie, the problem is more that we don't listen to it.  And often we confuse its voice with other people's priorities.  Yes, we as humans make mistakes; we may get married to the wrong person, and the consequences of getting out of that marriage may be too great for us to accept.  All of that may be true, but it still doesn't change the fact that love is not a possession, it is given and taken away freely.  And no one can deny that from being true, no matter how much we wish it.