On loving

I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars
 if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies

I’ve started to wonder again what it’s like to be in love. I know, I’ve spoken many times about being in love and have related it to my own experience, but now I feel like a novice again. What is it like to be in love? I mean, really in love; like the people who are so in love that they dedicate their lives to this love, to each other, and then they get married. What’s that like it? What is it like to love like that? I don’t think I know.

I imagine – and, yes, I believe imagining is not enough – that to be truly in love two people have to be really sure of themselves, of their feelings, of their partner’s character, and of their partner’s feelings. How else to do you put it all on the line like that? How do you accept such vulnerability if not by having at least a substantial amount of trust in someone else? It’s hard enough in this world to trust yourself (at least for some of us), but then to trust someone else too – Wow! That to me is what I have perhaps never experienced if I am now doubting whether I truly have known love.

The one question that niggles at the back of the mind of someone like me who has in the past believed that they were in love with someone else is ‘is it reciprocated?’ And an even worse and even more troubling question is ‘am I giving too much for what I can expect in return?’ I know, right, we all are told that biblical/romantic story that true “love is patient”, “love is kind”, “love is not selfish”, blah blah blah; so I should be feeling ashamed for having just admitted that those questions do go through the minds of so many of us, especially the majority of us who have been heartbroken in the past. But love IS selfish and unkind and impatient; I believe it has to be! For you to truly believe that the person whom you love is worthy of your love, you have to believe that they are someone special. And yet you have to convince yourself that they’re not so special so as to deserve someone better than us mere mortals with all the flaws in ourselves of which we have full comprehension. No, you have to be selfish and think, ‘yes, they’re special and deserve the best in the world, but I don’t care about that because I desire them to be mine’. There you go, that’s selfish! It’s selfish but I believe it’s necessary, and admittedly it is the same concept that brings about the impulse in us to better ourselves. We want to become that amazing person our own “special person” deserves – and there’s nothing wrong with that!

Is there something wrong with wanting or expecting someone to reciprocate our love? Oh yes, the biblical story again about giving unselfishly and without expectation of getting something is return… Well, I don’t believe it applies here. What’s the validity of loving someone if they don’t love you back? That is NOT love. That is worship or idolatry or something of that quality. It doesn’t console me to be loved by someone I don’t love in return, and it doesn’t rejoice my heart either to love someone who doesn’t love me in return (or whom I believe doesn’t). But besides wanting to be loved in return, I want to be loved equally.

Equality in love; oh gosh, I wish I could believe again that such a thing is possible. I mean, people get married all the time; it must be possible to love like that, right? Right? I’m at a loss here. I want desperately to believe it’s possible, but the evidence doesn’t convince me fully. Because I have been heartbroken in the past, maybe even too many times, I find it hard to ever imagine a time when I ask the question “am I giving too much?” and the answer is no. More interestingly is I (and perhaps others in my situation too) have never asked “am I giving too little?” I thought about this only a short time ago. I had never asked myself that question; and at the same time I was certain that almost 100% of the time I was giving too much, without a doubt. But what if I’m not? What if I am giving too little or what I give are only irrelevant things? Woah! That took some effort to overcome my ego to just write that last sentence. I often think that the things others are offering me are too little!

What would I give up for love? I’ve spoken of it; I’d give money, my career, lesser dreams than love, my religion perhaps, etc. But what won’t I give up? That is the more important question! Well, it would be hard for me to give up my family, especially my mother. It’d be hard to give up my desire to be a parent to a child during my lifetime. It would be hard for me to commit murder or break other deep-seated morals I stand against. It would be hard to give those things up for love, because it would be akin to abandoning my true self. What have I to offer anyone if I lack even my own integrity, my own character, my own self-respect? Sure, there is devotion and one can still do good even without a grain of soul left in you, but that is not living to me. Who would ask this of me? Who would expect I empty my soul in order to be with them? Well, some people would say that this is exactly what the devil does: ask for your soul even if there is nothing left in it. Could I love someone like that? Could I expect to be loved by someone like that? And it sounds dramatic when I put it in those terms, but you have to remember that the world we live in isn’t too far from my analogy. Adolf Hitler had a wife who adored him and loved him to the very last breath. Paedophiles often have wives who hide their secrets for them, who sometimes even assist their partners in their crimes.

One day I would like to be in love, truly in love. I would like to feel that my love is reciprocated, that it’s equalled, and that it is worth both my and my partner’s sacrifices.