Isn’t it telling that the most frequently “what is…?” question searched on Google is: “What is love?”
This probably reveals more about the society that asks an internet search engine such a thing than any answer reveals about the nature of love.
But if not Google, then where else can we look to understand love?
The fantasy-making machines of the world’s ultimate influencer — Hollywood — insists there is only one answer worth indulging, and that is the romantic kind.
Movies try to convince us we’ll feel this way forever. “And they lived happily ever after”, the story usually ends.
But have you noticed we are never shown what “happily ever after” looks like?
Most people, it would seem, agree, if only by default. They are dragged into seeking the person who will make them “happy” — via a dating site or a dominant culture that insists we must find “the one”.
The truth is, intense romance — often what people call “love” — has an expiry date.
No long-term relationship can maintain the initial chemistry that brought two people together. And that’s OK.
It would be hard to lead a normal life if we constantly felt overwhelmed with those magical “falling-in-love” feelings.
The change in the intensity of our feelings is a natural process in marriage. It is normal to be head-over- heels for someone at the beginning.
You have rose-coloured glasses on, and they can almost do no wrong in your eyes.
But the longer you are with them, the more you start to see their flaws as the intensity of feelings lessens.
But it doesn’t mean the love is gone.
Feelings-driven romantic love fizzles out with time, while true love is strengthened by time, commitment, and shared life experiences.
True love is sober and is a conscious choice made in spite of circumstances.
But romantic love is dependent on circumstances.
True love is the quiet understanding and mature acceptance of imperfection.
To sustain a marriage, feelings must evolve from romantic love to true authentic love.
This is partly because you can’t literally be all over your spouse and still get stuff done. And also, because the “romantic love hormones” that propel the intense “falling in love feelings” can only last for so long.
Hence, you shouldn’t marry someone just because you’re in-love with them, inasmuch as you shouldn’t divorce them because you are no longer in love with them.
It’s normal and natural for romantic relationships to start out fiery and passionate, then slowly transition into warmth and stability.
This is due to many factors, ranging from how attraction and bonding hormones in our bodies change over time, to the instinctive nesting habits that have kept us flourishing as a species.
However, when people speak about love, they often speak about romantic love, and make romance the sum total of what love is.
They idealise romantic love, and write poems about it. But romantic love is not everything.
It could be the beginning, but it is certainly not the end. And true love doesn’t have to be romantic.
Romantic love can never make you stay together when you take off your love-is-blind glasses and real life stressors come into play. Only true love can.
True love is not something you fall into or that passively happens to you beyond your control.
True love is an active choice you must make each day.
Stopping loving someone means you either never really loved the person or you’ve chosen otherwise — you’re enmeshed in the idea of inert romantic love.
Compatibility is an achievement of love, not its precondition. Because everyone is a “work in progress”, it is supposed to be difficult to be with anyone though we have fallen in love with them.
To be with someone, we need to recognise that, at times, we may both like and dislike them.
It is the power of love which allows us to accommodate both the strengths and weaknesses of the other person.
Romantic love, though important, is not everything. But true love gives value, meaning and inspires us to grow and be better human beings with meaningful contribution to society.
True love — the main ingredient of a lasting marriage — does not have to be romantic.
When you truly love someone, you give love to them with no expectations of getting anything in return — because true love has no reason.
In its purest sense, true love is about caring about the wellbeing of your partner without any concern for how it benefits you.
It is love with no strings attached. It’s the love you selflessly offer them freely.
The satisfaction in the expression of true love comes from giving, rather than receiving.
Truly loving someone means your thoughts return to them regularly; you feel safe around them; life feels more purposeful; you want to spend a lot of time together, and because of this it’s easy to be romantic with them.
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