I mean doesn’t every single love story end tragically?This was part of a message from someon
I mean doesn’t every single love story end tragically? This was part of a message from someone today, and it got me thinking. The answer is no, and I think it has to do with how we love. There is a serious problem with that word “love.” So much of what we see in literature and movies is highly idealized. It makes great poetry: She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that’s best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes; She is, in a word, perfect. Everything is shiny, new, and euphoric–all problems are swept away in a glorious rush of joy. This how so many of us think of love, and how so many of us want to love and be loved. The problem is that it is, in a word, bullshit. True love is a little ugly, but that’s why it survives. When you climb to the top of a rugged mountain, the gnarled little plants you find there are nothing you would put in a flower arrangement, but guess what? They’ve been there for hundreds of years; they’ve survived sun and wind and seasons without rain, and they’re still there. Idealized storybook love–infatuation–has as much to do with real love as cultured roses do with those plants. The roses would die on the face of that cliff in an hour–idealized love dies even faster once everyone has to face stark reality. This idealized love is a liar, making fools out of all of us, leaving heartbreak and pain every time, because it was never really there. Yes, gentle reader, this kind of love always ends in tears. Every time. The object of your love is, no doubt, a profoundly flawed human being, perhaps even as fucked up as you are, but that is why you love her. She doesn’t have to hide those flaws; you knowing them, accepting them, and committing to loving her with all of them… yeah, that’s not storybook romantic, but it’s real. Love is not a feeling; it’s that commitment. Feelings are tricky–they are mercurial and unreliable–you can’t build anything on a foundation of feelings that come and go at their own whim. Please excuse my pontification… this is just something I’ve learned over the years, and re-learned here recently. I think a lot of people don’t understand what love is, how to love, or how to let themselves be loved. So, to my reader, I would say yes, every love story built on idealized, romanticized love is doomed to end in tears–every time. But there is another way… -- source link