Jump to content

Recommended Posts

I just came across a Quora article with examples of true love. Two stories in particular brought tears to my eyes.

 

1) A handsome and athletic young man is pictured with his beautiful girlfriend, probably at prom or something. Next there is a picture him in military uniform, and a picture of him in combat gear on tour somewhere in the Middle East or Afghanistan. Next you see him horribly wounded on a hospital bed, plugged into an assortment of machines and heavily bandaged, his girlfriend by his side holding his hand. Next there are pictures of his life post-war, cuddling with his girlfriend, who stood by him despite him having lost all four of his limbs to his injuries. Finally you see him standing (on prosthetic limbs) at his wedding, marrying the girl.

 

2) A simple picture with a simple caption. An old lady in her 80s or 90s, sitting at a diner, eating lunch with a picture of her late husband placed opposite her, as if they were on a date together.

 

I am not sure why these stories affected me so much. I think I can be quite a cynical, shallow and logic-driven person, but I guess a part of me is hoping to find love like that. But what is true love? Have I walked away from it?

 

I broke up with my girlfriend of 1.5 years a few weeks ago because I was unhappy in our relationship. Not going into detail again, but I believe that she did love me enough to stick with me if I became bed-bound with an unfortunate illness or injury, she would have loved me unconditionally and we could have grown old together. I think her love at least partly comes from her co-dependency issues however, but does that invalidate her love? How do you define true love?

 

Don't worry, I am not back-tracking on my decision to break up. I get sad sometimes when I think about her, what we had, what I lost, how I hurt her etc... but in general my mental health has improved since the breakup. I am also not so selfish as to string her along in case I ever want to get back together with her. She rang me crying just over 2 weeks ago, but aside from that, I have maintained NC since the breakup.

Link to comment

Imo, you have not walked away from true love. True love is reciprocal. It's give and take. If you aren't feeling it for the other person then there is no sustainability and the relationship can break down at any time. Your ex may loved you but you didn't feel the same and that means that you did not have "true love" with her.

 

Relationships are complicated and these photos you mentioned are just snapshots/moments in time. You don't really know what happened before or after. The young woman may have cheated on him while he was on deployment or the old lady may have been neglecting her husband while he was alive. There are lots of motivations to stay on a relationship and not all are noble. When it comes to relationships noone knows what happens behind closed doors and appearances can be deceiving.

 

To me true love = accepting each other as they are, respect, trust, patience, forgiveness, commitment and trying to be the best version of oneself for each other. That makes it hard work and reciprocity is fundamental.

Link to comment

Thanks for your insightful answer @Clio

 

Regarding reciprocity, I guess I am trying understand whether I sabotaged my own long term happiness by convincing myself not to love her anymore. I wonder if I have agency in deciding who to love, whether such a decision could even by defined as love, but love is supposed to be elevated above rational choice and logic? I'm still working on developing a more satisfactory set of criteria for what I want in a life partner and figuring out what really matters to me.

Link to comment
What happened to Kathy? Where is Jane living?

 

Jane is still living at my house in the UK. I am giving her space to move on, I am not in a rush to remove her from my house, it is not costing me anything besides some rental income, which though significant, pales in comparison with how much she meant to me, even if we cannot be together anymore.

 

As for Cathy, I am taking things slowly with her, we still talk quite regularly and I have met her twice since I came back, but we are still very much in the "getting to know each other phase".

Link to comment

There is nothing in those two stories that implicate true love!!

 

In both scenarios there is a one sided story!!

 

Perhaps the girl loved her soldier bf. But would he have married her had he come back from deployment with all limbs intact? Was he a perfect bf? Who knows?

 

The old lady , well she and her husband came from an era where you married for life. And she is honouring her vows despite what may or may not have happened through their married life.

There are also people from that era that remain married despite their husband abusing their own children and ignoring it.

 

I have no idea why you split with your ex.

 

But I don’t think you have given up on true love. Regret is not love.

Link to comment

For me, true love is shown when a person shows you you are a priority, and you want to return those efforts: caring for him when he's sick, going to help her change a flat tire so she doesn't have to wait for hours for triple A. Making her birthday special, picking up things he needs at the store to save him a trip after work. Missing each other when apart.

Link to comment
Regarding reciprocity, I guess I am trying understand whether I sabotaged my own long term happiness by convincing myself not to love her anymore. I wonder if I have agency in deciding who to love, whether such a decision could even by defined as love, but love is supposed to be elevated above rational choice and logic? I'm still working on developing a more satisfactory set of criteria for what I want in a life partner and figuring out what really matters to me.

 

Having followed your story, I would say that your breakup is the precise opposite of self-sabotage. Your connection with Jane was not built from sustainable fibers, because a big premise of it was that, in your core, you considered her broken, not as capable of handling the business of living as you. You did not respect her full humanity, and, alongside her, could not fully respect your own. I think you both offered the other something you needed for a time—and that, of course, there was genuine love between you two—but its potential to keep deepening and expanding was limited by the lack of respect. It was a kind of love that became more constrictive to growth (yours, hers) than conducive to it.

 

Does that make it less "true"? I can argue yes, I can argue no, but I think that argument negates the point of love. That's the thing about love: it's an idea as much as it is a fact. If I point at a pickup truck and say "that is a pickup truck" while you say "that is Ferris wheel"—well, I am right, you are wrong, and if you're willing to listen to me I can "teach" you the difference. But if I say "I truly love my girlfriend" and can say "no, that is not true love," we are both right.

 

Personally, I've always like Rilke's idea of love: “Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.” The idea is that it's a connection built on total, mutual respect of another's individually (solitude), rather than around the idea that another person is meant to serve you, be that form of "service" making you feel great (physically, emotionally) or feeding you from a spoon after a stroke. Sure, those acts of service can be connected to love and extensions of it—the "protect" and "greet" part—but they can just as easily be connected to a million other things, many of them less savory.

 

In terms of trying to define "true" love? I would be careful about reaching for certain tropes—together 50 years, together through thick and thin—because that risks skimming the surface. To create an apocalyptic future scenario in your imagination—in which you are bed-bound, etc.—and then define "love" as a woman who plays nurse, and then look for that woman by swiping right on a mobile app or paying for her martini? That is pretty self-absorbed, casting another human being as character in your saga. Zoom out a bit and it's not that different from saying you want love to consist of a certain body type, or a certain number of weekly orgasms, or a woman loving you because you earn x amount of money. It's transactional.

 

What about the person inside that body, the person holding that spoon, the person bringing home that paycheck? If you don't respect that person all of the above is just artifice.

 

I think "true love" is an idea that feels like a fact, meaning it requires almost zero brainpower to understand. "That is a pickup truck," you say to your wife. "Also, I love you." It's that simple because it's that "true," for you, for you two, and somewhere in your cells (the bone ones, not the brain ones) you have faith that she feels the same. Nothing is being extracted because it is just there. It may change shape here and there, it may ebb and flow at different frequencies in the two people over time, but its "truth" is not subject to debate.

 

You do not question the existence of the sun on the coldest, cloudiest of day, because you don't see the purpose of the sun solely to warm you but to simply be the sun: powerful, mysterious, integral for life, impossible not to respect for being exactly what it is. Love, true love, is kind of like that, I think.

Link to comment

Sorry to hear this. You're still hurting and that's ok. Any healthy woman that you date long enough to know, fall in love with and make a commitment with will be your love story. Try to stay away from sentimental stuff, unless it helps you work things out emotionally.

I broke up with my girlfriend of 1.5 years a few weeks ago because I was unhappy in our relationship.

Link to comment

I can't speak for everyone nor every couple.

 

True love means respect in my long term marriage. It's about being selfless and no "me first" attitude. It's about always thinking of the needs of your partner first before your own. Also, saying kind words of expression as opposed to the "sincerest form of flattery is silence" mode. Love is action. It's about helping without having been asked to help, picking up the slack automatically, making life easier and smooth for the entire household. It's "getting down to brass tacks" with daily life.

 

True love is commitment and riding out the storm whether it's a bad day, bad finances, struggle, health woes or hardship and achieving fruition later.

 

Love is about mature, daily cooperation and being in lockstep with your partner. Love requires patience and forgiveness.

 

Most of all, sincere, true love requires mutual very high emotional intelligence (EQ). Google those words. Without emotional intelligence ALL relationships (including friendships) are doomed for failure.

Link to comment

Love is about trust as if your very life depended on him or her.

 

Love is about always having the other person's back, being able to lean on them and they to you and catch you when you fall.

 

Love is about being a moral, honorable, conscientious, decent human being.

Link to comment

I have no idea about true love anymore. I doubt it exists, at least for me, and I'm not trying to find it anymore.

 

You may think Jane would stick around if you're bed bound but from what you've told me, I'm not sure how she would. From your past threads, she sounds like a real wounded, mostly incapable bird. If you're down and out and not making the money, I don't know how she'd stick around and be able to support you since you'd no longer be supporting her.

 

You need to find someone who is a little more capable, a little more adult. Someone who actually would be able to handle such a situation if it were come to it.

Link to comment
Does Kathy know that you are still reaching out to your ex? That is not right!

 

I am not reaching out to my ex... I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I said she rang me crying 2.5 weeks ago, I did not initiate that contact, and I think I owed it to her to at least sit and listen for a while, whilst making it clear that there will be no reconciliation. It has been NC since then.

Link to comment

True, sincere, moral, honorable, respectable love still exists but it's hard to find. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack or winning the lotto.

 

It's a great big world out there. The key is to become very picky, choosy and selective in order to find the right one. Never settle for mediocrity or crumbs. Keep your standards very high.

 

It's better to be alone than lonely and miserable with the wrong person. My parents can attest to that. :upset:

Link to comment

Love and these kinds of stories are all about emotions, but emotions are fickle, fleeting, and changing. Long term relationships are more about loyalty to each other, which is a conscious choice, rather than emotions. Some days it's a hard choice, others an easy one. In successful relationships, you have two people who choose correctly every single day even when it's extremely hard.

 

My personal observation is that people who tend to over romanticize love and relationships tend to fail the worst at them because they have highly idealistic expectations of feeling always high on love emotions and are quite unequipped to deal with the down times and the difficult times when they will invariably experience conflict, emotional distance, life challenges, etc. When that happens, they feel out of love and off to the races to find the next high....rinse and repeat until either they figure it out or it becomes a lifestyle.

Link to comment

I wish I could remember the book. It's pretty text book psychology stuff from the era of Jung and Freud. The opening chapter does a good job at defining love.

 

That people associate love with magical feelings and emotions that come over them and while that is partly true, the chapter goes on to describe love as more of an action.

 

Feelings are complex and often a result of some experience or something familiar, even if it's unhealthy.

 

It goes on to give analogies of how a doctor loves medicine and he dedicates his life and time to study and practice.

How an artist spends hours honing their skills and creating beautiful art. (they both were in miserable relationships)

These are all actions in the service of cultivating love. The love of medicine and art.

 

It wraps up with the question, what would it be like if we dedicated ourselves to the service of loving relationships. So much we take for granted and think it will survive purely on that funny feeling.

 

Love is more of an action than it is a feeling. And then the wheel goes around. . .

You can't have one without the other.

Link to comment
There is nothing in those two stories that implicate true love!!

 

In both scenarios there is a one sided story!!

 

Perhaps the girl loved her soldier bf. But would he have married her had he come back from deployment with all limbs intact? Was he a perfect bf? Who knows?

 

The old lady , well she and her husband came from an era where you married for life. And she is honouring her vows despite what may or may not have happened through their married life.

There are also people from that era that remain married despite their husband abusing their own children and ignoring it.

 

That's true!

 

Love is more of an action than it is a feeling.

 

Agreed.

 

Was the book called, The Road Less Travelled?

Link to comment

I relate to DF's take above, post #16.

 

I have no grandiose ideas for you or great love stories. I also have no great schemes or love advice. I can only tell you that true love ends up actually being a choice and a practice. It's a constant practice of discipline, tolerance, tact and expression. Emotions are formed by mental practice and constant training. If a person keeps training him or herself to be intolerant of his or her partner or less understanding, the outcome will be directly related to that practice. Your reality and the things/people in it (reflections of your reality) will mirror you.

 

The same goes for unhealthy practices (co-dependency, being a doormat, disrespectful behaviour overall).

 

I don't believe in a dictatorship in relationships and am a firm believer the silent and unspoken partner (other side of the coin) of love is actually tolerance. It's vastly understated and often misconstrued, underused and targeted as being a negative trait in the wrong context. Not everyone is mentally stable enough or emotionally stable enough to be tolerant and not everyone is able to draw a line when the time comes if that tolerance is out of place or not appropriate.

 

If you happen to find someone who is willing to explore those things with you, it's a gift. You'll both learn your own practice and develop your own limits and tolerances together. If you have represented intolerance and are unusually short on patience or understanding, it's probably a good indicator that you need more time alone to explore your own identity.

Link to comment

 

 

Was the book called, The Road Less Travelled?

Oh. . my recall just kicked in!

 

The Art of Loving/Eric Fromm

 

I read it while going to therapy and contemplating my divorce. There were so many things that showed me the way. This was one of them.

I read the first chapter (that I shared) and the realization made me cry.

 

Though my husband professed his love to me repeatedly, while reading this book I realized his actions were far from loving. I realized a lot of things he did were actually somewhat hateful. It was really confusing to have someone in your ear telling you they love you when their actions didn't even come close.

Link to comment
It goes on to give analogies of how a doctor loves medicine and he dedicates his life and time to study and practice.

How an artist spends hours honing their skills and creating beautiful art.

 

I like this a lot. Where I think a big challenge comes in is recognizing the qualities in another—and ourselves—that are integral to keep that "action" mechanism active.

 

I've dedicated my life—or at least the years from 17 to 40, aka present day—to a single creative craft. It is love, for sure, which is hardly to say it is infinite pleasure and magic, though there are doses of that. More like infinite showing up and patience, highs and lows that bend back toward a solid base, fueled by a kind of faith and curiosity.

 

Reading your post I realize how much all that exists (or has come to exist, after perhaps being a substitute) as my model for both "love" and a loving partnership: a diligent, disciplined choice to commit, submit, and seek nourishment through cultivating something that is inherently mysterious.

 

What do we need in a person to be able to make a choice like that? What do we need to cultivate in ourselves to be able to make that kind of choice so the weight isn't on another person to routinely validate it? Answering those question requires a certain discipline in itself, given the range of factors (social, cultural, emotional, hormonal) that can spin the compass needle.

 

If the hope or expectation is that "love" is the thing that stops it from spinning, I think people are in for the rinse-and-repeat experience of love that DF outlined with trademark no-nonsense grace.

Link to comment

True love is about everyday compatibility even when life feels mundane and ordinary. True love is not constant 24 / 7 excitement. True love is not infatuation.

 

True love is being always considerate, providing harmony, peace, comfort, security and stability. It's all about consistency.

Link to comment

Hmmmm....good question. Have read all the posts and OP I think I've commented about your break-up with Jane on your other posts. So I might just stick to discussing the true love topic.

 

I think that true love is not necessarily identical for all people and every single couple. Different people may not even view love in the same way. Monogamous people may believe that there is only one "the one" for them. But polyamorous people say they can love more than one person.

 

I think that true love is probably just meshing well together and really enjoying that person's company, where things are mostly easy and comfortable. But with love and sexual attraction also in the mix.

 

I wanted to say as well that if one partner becomes disabled in some way, it's not necessarily that their partner didn't truly love them, but maybe that their relationship changed due to the disability or injury. E.g. if the couple had a lot of common hobbies centered around the outdoors and sporty stuff, and that's what was at the core of their relationship. But one partner became a quadriplegic so then they couldn't do any of that together anymore. I think when a relationship really changes for whatever reason, it might not be able to go on.

 

Also yes the photo of the old lady "eating lunch" with her dead husband is very sweet. However it sort of perpetuates the idea that if your partner dies, if you move on from them, then you never really loved them. I understand in the case of the 90-year-old lady, maybe she was married for 60+ years and she feels she's too old to find anyone else. But if it was a younger person, even a 60-year-old, if they find someone else it doesn't mean they didn't love their partner. It just means they came to terms with their partner's death. And they still deserve to have someone else now thar their partner is gone.

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...