I’ve been thinking a lot about love. I’ve been single for an extremely long time now. I was with my last boyfriend for less than a year. We started off really intense. It wasn’t intentional, I simply met him and felt as if I had known him forever. Somehow for him it fizzled out. I kept holding on to something that was already dead, hoping that he would wake up and realize he loved me but it never happened.
Lately it seems that a lot of people around me are breaking up. One of my friends just had her heart broken by a guy who had already brought up marriage and moving in together. Another friend is on the verge of divorce. Love seems like one of those things that everyone is grasping for and once you feel it you think, “This is it!” And yet so many times, it’s not.
So what’s the deal? Are we really meant to be with just one person forever? Would our lives be easier if we thought of love as a series of long term relationships rather than the expectation of having only one “true” love? Why is it that so many relationships end when only one person has lost interest, what is it that makes that person’s love fizzle out while the other’s is burning bright?
I was watching one of my favourite shows, Being Erica, lately. The main character congratulated a friend of hers for being in love. The whole concept seems so strange. On the one hand, we all want the best for our friends. Although I am sometimes lonely I often feel excited for my friends when they start new relationships. And yet if there’s anything the past few weeks has shown me it’s that even the most perfect looking relationships can fall apart. It’s an interesting paradox that even in an age of 1 in 3 marriages ending in divorce people will still pour their life savings into one special day to celebrate their love.
So what’s the real deal? Well, I have no idea. I can only hope that the people I care about find love but furthermore that they find joy outside of romantic love. There is so much more to life and even though I know that feeling of life only being complete when you have been swept up in the romance of being with someone else I also know that there is so much more to life than just love.