" Why don't you have the time to call me anymore?" "What are you so busy doing all the time?" "I can't believe you forgot my birthday!" I heard my friend speak these lines as she spent her days weeping, dejected, getting out of a long, yet broken relationship. Now my friend, I'll call her Alex, is a feeler. She is almost mentally wired to take all her decisions based on how she feels about the situation. Alex spent weeks thinking, caught up in the battle between her head asking her to let go and her heart asking her to cling on to the deep love that was there once, and fearing the break-up would lead to an ego death and emotional deficit in her life. I sat with her through a lot of this, wondering the strange unexpected courses that love can take, and how difficult it is to fall out of it.
After much deliberation, I feel I have had an epiphany, I'm going to formulate it into a theory.
It's because love is the most intense emotion we feel, and because we have so much at stake, that it is so closely related to fear. We fear those whom we love because they are the ones who can hurt us the most, and when they do, it's not such a big leap from that realized fear to hate. So it is no irony any more that Alex now hates the one she loved so dearly once, probably as fiercely as she loved him!
I feel romantic love, and I mean the true romantic love here, is no more or less crazy than parental love. Just as our parents continue to love us the same way they did when they first held us and looked into our tiny half-open eyes, even if we eventually grow up to become crappy adults; this love keeps us from breaking out of the once blissful but eventually crappy relationship. Just like Alex, we are caught up in the never-ending head-heart battle, till we reach the ultimate emotional breaking point.
But are we deceiving ourselves? For self-deception is also deception.
hey great blog....
ReplyDeletemakes me wanna start one :-)
Thanks..I'm glad!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff. My personal take, though, is that Parental love almost never turns into hatred, in the way that you said Romantic love might. I might court controversy here, but I believe that a biological bond is far stronger - probably because it is developed very early in life, in much the same way that our earliest impressions are usually our strongest ones.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree, though I meant romantic love is as hard to let go off as parental love, but once it goes away it takes a different turn, parental love wouldn't.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad u read it :)
wow.. I cant deny a word of what you have just deciphered.. great work di
ReplyDeleteA relationship so called of "Love" as of Alex is screwed up out of Expectation.
ReplyDeleteExpectation is inversely proportional to frustration.
Look at those families where the expectation from their child is a lot. Ask the child whether he finds love his parents eye. I bet....he will deny.
In conclusion, I would say Love a person without Expectations rather silly expectations. Hard to do so in this materialistic and glamor filled word.
But give a try.
Unrequited Love is what you speak of here. It is the highest kind ofcourse, but where do we see it these days..Most of us lack the time to cultivate it for anyone.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYup....you are rite....Waqt - waqt ki baat hai ....In 21st century we also want love to be a "Instant Mix".....kata...khola...ghola...n bla..blaa !!!!!
ReplyDeleteBut we forget...that love is a natural phenonmena...and like any natural phenonmena, if it is made to happen fast ....the result will be one final thing "sucessful abortion/ Somthing Hybrid"
In any way, Parents ke love ko samjhane me bhee to hume itna waqt laga, hai ki nahi ???