I go biking every morning for an hour. While biking, I listen to the music mostly soft rock. Today while listening to Celin Dion, I came to this realization that “love” is such a universal entity that no matter where we live, our perception toward this emotion is the same. You can see this word in literature, and music; yet there are so many approaches in defining it. What is love? Is it a powerful force that makes a lover to go beyond the limit? And if so, why? I was talking to a very good friend of mine and we were discussing the word and its applications in many different ways, including, love of God, Plutonic, unconditional motherly love, fatherly love and love between two couples. I cam to the point that if you can love your child unconditionally (somehow Plutonic love), then why can’t you love your partner as such? Why the first one is nurturing and the second is not? Why we need someone’s love, but we are willingly giving that to our kids, and for some of us to God? Why is it that when it comes to partner it takes another turn in obsession, desperation, and possession? And why is it when one thinks there is nothing to get in return, that same individual stops loving?
It is the case with most of us.
The problem, I believe, has a deep root in how we get parental love during the first years of our lives, and in order to make that up, we see ourselves into a deeper problem by thinking that our “empty cup” of love can be filled through someone else. I have been there, honestly, and most of the time I asked something from my partner, who could not provide for me. It is not that he did not want to, but he did not have it. Let simplify it in an example: I asked him for apples and he gave me oranges! And in return, I gave him apples while all this time he wanted oranges! Meaning, what we want as love is not necessarily what our partners think it is. You might think it is a very simple fact, and it is; however, to put it into action is another story. How? I started by believing in myself, and accepting who I am. By doing so, it became easier to accept my partner as well. What does love have to do with it? When I accept myself, I started to love myself as who I am. In the procedure, I started accepting my partner, too, and start not to expect him of what he does not have, but magnify those things that I admire in him and in other people for that matter. I am not done yet, still working; nevertheless, the result I am getting is way better than what I thought it would be.
