Jaded

Currently I am juggling thoughts of three friends with relationship problems. All of which have been highlighted within the past few days. I am sure I have more friends with relationship problems. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to suggest a friend who doesn't have a relationship problem. But I'll just focus on these three for now, and because this post really isn't directly about any of them anyway.

Sometime over a year ago, I came to the conclusion that being in love is a feeling not to be trusted. What dictates who we fall in love with? Certainly not who treats us well. Not who are nice to us. Not who do good things in the world. The first people that you love are your parents. They care for you and you love them. Is this the earliest lesson of love? I love those whom I think I need things from? Those who I feel can supply me with something that is vital to my survival?

Unfortunately, we can provide ourselves with food and shelter. So what is it that we so desperately need from a fellow human being? Validation? Approval? Comfort? And what price are we willing to pay to achieve these things? What aspects of ourselves are we so willing to throw away and trod upon in order to get some sort of acceptance from someone else whom we have deemed the vessel of our love?

Too many friends of mine, as well as myself, have put up with untold slights and slanders for those whom we love. As if the fact that we love them should excuse their behavior. As if the fact that we love them can make a bad situation okay. The most telling symptom of this unfortunate state of affairs is when your friends start expressing disbelief at your willingness to accept such behavior and you continue to make excuses to yourself for your own acceptance and for the one's you love behavior. But then, your friends have a clarity you do not. They can see the forest for the trees, when you, so besotted by love, are willing to accept almost anything on the chance that it could become the ideal you have worked out in your mind, if only, if only.

Everyone I have talked to in a successful long-term relationship talks about when the passion of 'being in love' fades to simple love. It is no longer a forceful element shaping lives but a calm and constant link that simply exists. This I think, is the ideal. The calm and constant. The safe and secure. The ever present. Not the tumultuous, the sporadic, the unpredictable, the unaccountable. This extreme state of unstable emotion isn't really love. It's infatuation. It's desperation. It's a high like from a drug, but like that high, doesn't last. Isn't constant or reliable or trustworthy.

If being in love with someone was about their worthiness, then there would only be a select few people in this world who received love, and the rest of us would strive to better ourselves in the hopes of achieving that goal. But that's not how it is. Bad people are loved. Mean people are loved. Cruel people are loved. And not by the insipid or stupid, but it does make you wonder, what exactly makes anyone deserving of such adoration?

And so inversely, I have decided that to love someone else is really a selfish act. It's about what you need in your life that you think you can get from that person. Sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't. Each of my three friends within the past few days has professed love for their partner while coupling that proclamation with a deep seated sense of personal need. Desperation almost. That when everything seems insurmountable they want to feel safe and secure from this person whom they have deemed worthy of their love. As if loving them alone should entitle them to a lifetime of security. Except objectively, they all know that's not the case, but knowing it and feeling it are completely different things.

I don't say these things only from observation. I have been a fool for love. But I suppose in some way I consider myself lucky that when my relationships with those I loved ended, they did truly end. Usually in a rather spectacular exploding fashion. Which, while painful at the time, was at least freeing.

And being so released, I find I have no wish to go back to that state. I hate the insecurities that feeling attached to someone brings out in me. I hate recognizing that I will accept behavior from someone I love that I wouldn't tolerate from a friend. I despise the desperation and the clinginess. How my mood is so completely dependent on a word or a gesture. How is that a good thing? I don't think it is.