What does it mean to “fall in love?”
Love has been so “Hollywood-ized” (totally made that word up, but I’m sure you know what I mean) and Disney-ed that it’s morphed into a mish-mash of confusion, idealism, and superficialism. In a few weeks, millions of dollars will be spent on a commercialized “holiday” to show love to those whom you’re supposed to show love and sacrifice every single day. I’m not trying to be cynical but to seriously understand the feelings, emotions, and actions behind the one word that millions of songs have been sung about and millions of poems have been written about.
I’m obviously not talking about love for your child, your friends, or your family, but the love I’ve always struggled to understand and experience between a couple. Maybe I’ve read too many romance novels and was forced to grudgingly watch “The Notebook” twice, but I just really don’t know. It seems that the feelings of “love” are often mistaken for the excitement of a new relationship, and after about two years, those fun feelings fizzle, and everyone is bored. I’ve seen couples that have been married for decades and still are crazy about each other. Why is that? How does a handful of couples make it through so many years and still be madly in love with one another?
Love obviously takes lots of work and obviously cannot be encompassed in one word, feeling, action, or thought, but how does one know that one has “fallen in love?” The only answer I seem to get is, “You just know.” Um, not helpful.
These are the things that I ponder frequently. Happy hump day.
I honestly don’t know how those couples make it decades still in love as well. I was with my ex for 14 years, and I can pretty confidently say that at least 10 of those years were more about comfort and habit than love. Maybe I’m just jaded but I think that kind of lasting love is so rare that I don’t expect to ever find it.
But, what the movies don’t talk about is the *work* behind the love. It’s not all cupid’s arrows and roses. You have two imperfect people coming together – and somehow that’s going to create perfection? No. Love is a *choice*, and it’s something both parties have to work on (and, in my situation, only one of us was willing to work on it – and that’s never enough.)