Love, that elusive feeling we all wish we’d feel for someone forever. Not just loving someone but someone who’d truly love us as well. We go in and out of several relationships looking for it but somehow we just never seem to get it right. We don’t realise that the problem is not that the love doesn’t exist but we don’t let it manifest (How do I mean? We’ll get to that in a moment). Of course not every relationship is loveless or full of love. We see love as the singular pinnacle of each relationship but love isn’t singular! It exists together with tolerance, understanding and honesty. You meet someone, there’s lust, desire and attraction. A few years down the line all that fuzzy warm glow that comes with the lust and desire tones down and what you have left is you wondering if you still love the person you’re with. This is where you have to choose if you’re ready to go the distance. Yes love is a choice and to choose it means to tolerate, understand and be honest with whom you’re with no matter what. As soon as you stop doing these things doubt sets in and that’s when you start to feel like everything’s gone downhill. The problems in our relationships exist because we do not see love as I’ve just described it. We jumble love with so many different emotions (lust, care, intimacy etc) each day that it’s hard to clearly define its existence or lack thereof. When we are sure it doesn’t exist is when either partner has decided not to tolerate, communicate, care for or understand the other.
Earlier I mentioned that we do not let it manifest. Well let’s take an example; Nkechi* and Jude* meet, get attracted, ‘fall in love’ and get married. Everything is peachy for the first two years; he still listens to her, consoles her when she worries, supports her and cares for her. Then all of sudden she wakes up one morning and realises he doesn’t do any of that anymore. It might seem sudden to her but in reality his new attitude was a process, most things happen gradually. He might have been doing all of that for the first few years of marriage but was she doing the same? Did she get so comfortable she stopped listening to him, consoling him and supporting him as well? When either party stops caring, love stops growing and eventually dies. It doesn’t just up and leave, to keep love requires constant work. Jude might not even realise that he has gradually stopped loving his wife, and that’s because no one has called him out on it. If she used to do the same things for him and she kept doing it he would have noticed the one-sidedness of it and if he chooses to let it be that way then he has simply chosen not to love anymore. So that brings me back to love being a choice and how we let it manifest is simply by remembering to do all the little things that keep it going each day.
We want to be loved but we’re lazy to love. Everything is made to have a balance; life and death, black and white etc. Nature works in pairs so for love to last you have to give it to receive it and as soon as you stop giving it gradually ebbs away. The fast-paced world we live in today doesn’t help either. You might wonder how you can manage work, friends and other issues you might have as well as having to be lovey-dovey to your partner, this is where the ‘choice’ comes in. You have to choose to make your love a priority so it can go the distance. Nothing good comes easy and the harder you work the better it gets. But bear in mind that too much of everything ruins it. You can’t do the work for both you and your partner, that would just breed the opposite emotion; resentment. So you do your part and if your partner chooses not to do his, then this brings you to the point where you have to practice honesty and communication. If after talking you realise that his choice is final, then you should read the handwriting on the wall and either choose to tolerate it and stay to just give love and be happy with your decision, or you move on and find someone else who you hope would choose you forever. The fact remains that no one wants to be alone and choosing to stay with someone who has decided not to love you back equates to being alone and you shouldn’t be. There’s someone out there for everyone and just because you tried once, twice or even thrice doesn’t mean you’re out of it. It simply shows that you’re looking for love in the wrong places and hopefully you’d eventually get it right.
Going the distance in love is not an easy road but people have gotten there and you would too. Just look before you leap and choose to love who you’re with everyday and you might just get to ‘forever’.
