Today feels like a day to write about love. I've had many years to experience it firsthand, secondhand. (Sometimes, even with my right hand?). Hehe. Jokes.
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*DISCLAIMER*
*I get how it may make me sound bitter (which I am not because I am finally understanding what they meant when they tell you that it's important to spend time alone) but it's purely a record of what I observed. It does not mean that I close my doors on love and vulnerability, but reaching my late 20s, I just have a better grasp of certain blind spots. I am not anti-love. I am just pointing out a systematic indoctrination that may mean we are doomed from the start! I mean, if people did not love one another, then how would there be a next generation? we would live in a world of chaos and war, murders, crime, and a complete decimation of religion. And that wouldn't be a very nice place to live, would it?
However, if there's a takeaway from this post, it's that it's always good to be aware if this "love" was actually your choice to make or whether you were part of a multi-systemic indoctrination. *
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So, basically, I've come to see that marriage has very little to do with falling in love and more to do with companionship.
As long as we live in a world which glorifies marriage as some ultimate end goal, as long as we live in a world where friendships are not valued as much as a boyfriend or husband, as long as we live in a world that you're somehow only complete if a man is holding your hand, as long as it's more important to stay married while hating every second of it than to thrive solo, (and bearing in mind that this comes from a perspective of someone who is not in a relationship or marriage herself), marriage has more to do with:-
- practicalities of not dying alone when your parents aren't around
- ending the societal pressure to be accountable for why you're not in your 'next stage' of life
- picking someone and making it work till death does you apart
- having someone make you soup when you're sick, now or at 80
- someone sending you a morning text so it tells you they care if you're alive or missing
- having someone to raise a child with, and then, hopefully, by virtue of the fact that the both of you created that child, one would not abandon the other
- having someone to laugh with
- having someone to do shared hobbies with
- having someone to make dinner for
etc.
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Somehow, when you get older, the definition of love transforms. It takes a more... mature shape and form. You come to accept that it will never feel all-consuming in the way that it used to when you were a teenager or in your early 20s, doing a trial run of what spectrum of emotions you could feel. Suddenly, on a balance of probabilities, and in a bid to leap into a violent ocean based on calculated risks, the concept of arranged marriage (which you swore that you wouldn't want for yourself because why would you settle for this compared to the magic of love)....makes sense?
Whether we like it or not, 'true love' and marriage has been (and continues to be) glorified in the form of literature, music, and movies and culture. So from before we understood what words were, the seed was sown. (Exhibit A below)
Love makes you vulnerable and sometimes, for lack of better words, even a little stupid.
In your early childhood, each person develops a perception of what 'home' is. When we are faced with our parents' mortality, (the fact that one day they mom and dad will be gone and that becomes the ultimate demise of our childhood), whether we realise it or not, we try to mimic some semblance of this 'home' in a partner so that a little bit of your childhood lives on.
So basically, if 'home' looked like chaos, people become much more okay to settle for chaotic, seemingly toxic and abusive behaviours in partners because even if the whole world sees it, it's not immediately obvious or unthinkable for the person knee deep in an unhealthy relationship to live with someone like that.
And on the other hand, if you grew up with a healthy model of what love is, a good sense of self esteem/self-confidence, an understanding of your true worth, when being alone sounds like peace to you as opposed to a punishment, the search for 'the one' could become a lot more difficult, perhaps because you have the ability to provide yourself most of the emotional needs you may have. Staying in a long lasting relationship often involves compromises or apologising when you are not wrong just so that a fight ends (among many other unspoken rules). Your potential partner choices are now competing with your peace in solitude. What are the chances of another person improving your life better than the ways you already manage to provide for yourself?
I personally witnessed how one partner creates a problem for the other, then proceeds to swoop in to solve that same problem, causing the other to feel so much gratitude and amazement at their "conflict-resolution-skills" and feeling assured that it's a solid partnership, while being blind to how the problem was created by their own partner in the first place. And then when I pointed it out, I was told "you wouldn't understand". It's almost as if they WANT to hypnotize themselves to believe that their life now has a hero.
I personally witnessed how if before, someone would have known perfectly fine knew how to change their own lightbulb, car tyres, assemble their own furniture, solo travel, navigate unknown places with GPS, create pros and cons lists and choose decisions, make their own soup when sick, write their thoughts with clarity, suddenly, when a partner is in the picture, even if you know how to do these things, .... you suddenly don't (?) It's almost as if biologically, love becomes a drug that makes your peace and existence absolutely dependant on the other being around, doing those things you can very well do for yourself, and in effect, it makes the both of you a little stupider(?) in order for that the relationship can sustain?
I personally witnessed partnerships which start out from one person admiring or being infatuated with certain traits the other has. But when the partnership is created, they develop an almost melted/enmeshed existence and both individuals now transform into one unified blob rather than maintaining what made them attractive as individual people, creating a synergy of each ones' individual strengths, preferences and dislikes.
The next thing you know, it's "we're not going" , "we're sick", "we don't watch that" , "we won't be buying that" "we don't believe in that", "we're pregnant" when actually, it's only about one of them. That's how you begin to lose who you are in a relationship and set yourself up for a MAGNANIMOUS scale of heartache. Please watch below to learn what enmeshment really is about.
I personally witnessed how, in the name of love, there are a lot of delicate balances you'd not want to upset. For example, if a woman were earning more or spending (one sided perceptions of) 'too much time' with their passion and job, that risks upsetting the balance of "gender roles" of the traditional provider. And deep down, to sustain that marriage, these women (and of course sometimes this is men too!) do realise that what they are doing is dimming their light to make the other appear brighter. But it's the bargain they are happy to strike in the name of the greater (probably indoctrinated) purpose of announcing to the world that you will not be dying alone.
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So, why do we do it? In spite of secretly knowing everything I just mentioned?
....Because perhaps, love is the most instinctively human thing you can do!