Saturday, October 09, 2010

what is love?

What is love? No, not the song by Haddaway. But LOVE, the emotion you feel for someone else. There are many sorts of love...the love you feel for your friends, the love for your family..your parents, your siblings, your grandparents. The awesome love you feel for your children. The love you feel for someone not related to you: your spouse, your significant other.

Someone dear to me recently asked this..what is love? What is marriage? Some thoughts were tossed around.

*I think it changes. In your early twenties, aren't most people who get married full of happily ever after and do they not really think of the struggles marriages go through? Is that why they end in divorce? Does the answer to the question change with age and the different things we go through in life? Is what you expect from marriage different at 18, 28, 48? Does is change with the baggage we accumulate, the people we encounter? The changes in ourselves?

*Maybe it's taking each day at a time, while holding onto that image of us in 25 years. I don't know... I really don't.
Being married means taking care of myself and what I want to do, while checking in with my spouse about it. Finding that balance between "me time" and "us time". Knowing that if I feel even a glimmer of fear that we're headed down the wrong path, that we need to figure out how to get ourselves turned around.

*sigh, what does marriage give? I suppose some of us who have been married, remarried or not remarried but very happy...maybe our views are different. Different because we went through the experience of a failed marriage. I agree that when I was young, I was 24 when I married, I thought marriage would give me the happiness. I expected disagreements, sure, but I don't think I expected it to be so much work. I don't think I expected to be at the point to where I felt like I had given all I had to give and was getting nothing in return. I can honestly say now that I wish I had waited!! I was still finding myself, developing my intrinsic "me". My marriage failed for many reasons...lack of communication, lack of intimacy, a sense of control... the absence of him, even when he was physically present.

*Your marriage question -- although it's not the sexiest answer, my expectation from marriage is having best friend for life and someone who makes be a better person and stronger in my faith & relationship with God - and hopefully I am that for him, too! Again, not super exciting, but if I had to sum it up in one sentence, that be it. :-)

Does waiting until you are more who you are meant to be make for a better relationship, better marriage? Are some people meant to never marry or do they just never find the right person?

Here is what LOVE is defined as:

love 

1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
6. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
7. sexual intercourse; copulation.
8. affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one's neighbor.

Do we choose to love or is it an emotion we just feel without having any control over it? Can we choose to NOT love someone?

Can we control who we love? We can not love those we are related to but usually the case is that we have an affection for those in our families. But can we control who we love, who we want to be our best friend and lover? How is compatibility determined?

Does anyone have any thoughts...please share.

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