Love

The idea of Love is so interesting to me that I think about Love often and how special it is. It is so special to us that most people’s goal in life is to find one person to spend the rest of their lives with. Imagine that, you say to yourself I am looking for a single person who will be so special to me, who I’m willing to open up to and trust completely with my whole life. I will share my dreams, goals, family and friends with this person. I will start a new family with this person and have a bunch of kids, I’ll even buy a dog with them. All of that sounds amazing until the day you realize that it’s all ending.

So many people start great relationships with a single goal in mind which is unconditional love Until Death Do Us Part! But then what happens? We break up. This kind of brings me to my point.

To understand this next part and I mean really understand it you would have to have been in at least one prior long term relationship and are currently in one. I’m thinking at least 2 to 3 years of sufficient emotional investment to understand this at a deeper level. Now that we have the ground rules established I want you to think back to your previous relationship. Do you remember how close you were with that person? Do you remember all the cute pet names you had for each other? All your favorite movies, TV shows you watched together? Do you remember all the times you made love? All the times you told that person how much you loved them and how you never felt the same about anyone else? While you were with that person you thought nothing could come between you, you thought that you had found the person you would spend the rest of your life with. At the time you told yourself that it was the best time of your life! …. And then, it was all gone.

Let’s fast forward to your current situation. Look at you now! You’re in a new relationship. You have been with this person for a few years and you know you are sticking around because they are just perfect. You have been going through your life looking for someone like this for years and it has finally happened, you got it all. You have so much fun together. You get along, you have the same long term goals, you support each other’s career goals, your friends and families have met and love each other. You go on telling this person that you love them unconditionally. You tell them that you will stay with them forever and that you have never felt this way before. You truly believe it and feel it, you have really never felt this way before… just like last time!

Why do we do this? I wonder what it is exactly so two questions come to mind. Do we feel this way because there is some human need for us to be with someone and this basic need is satisfied and we simply feel like most things in life are where we need them to be? Or is this new person we are with simply so much better than anyone we have ever met before that they completely complement and improve all aspects of our lives? This person is somehow able to improve certain parts of our personality (Jack Nicolson’s line from As Good as it Gets comes to mind “You make me want to be a better man”). They have a positive impact on our careers, relationships with our family and friends, and our overall outlook and the way we think? I am without a doubt convinces that it’s the second scenario but then the next thing that jumps to my mind is, what happens if this relationship ends and we find someone new just like after the first time?

Are we so obsessed with the idea of True Love and want to so badly believe that there is only one person in the world who is meant for us, when in reality there are so many people out there who could satisfy all the needs we might have and maybe even satisfy them much better? Scary questions!