Love Between Adults- Memories for Life

I think it is probably clear that I'm not a big fan of the idea of Monogamy.
But it does kind of go deeper than that.

I think the whole expectation surrounding all of it, the whole mating for life thing, it's just something that we don't need. People generally take the whole thing far too seriously.
And having an institution such as marriage, a bond with legal connotations that needs an authority other than the people involved to dissolve, really doesn't help matters in my book.

It places a burden on people- and yes, it's going to put people off.
It's going to put people off falling in Love naturally. Which is, of course, exactly what it does.

Ok, most of us now accept that marriage isn't for life, or needn't be. But we still make it very hard for people to get out of. And why should we? The defenders of marriage would say, to make people take marriage seriously. It SHOULD be hard to get out of.
That's just crazy. If people don't want to be together, why make it any harder for them to walk away than it has to be? Or if one wants it over, but the other doesn't, why should the one who wants it over have to justify that?

But I guess why I really object to it, is that the expectations created by the existence of the institution, seep downwards contaminating the general view of romantic love generally.
The idea that it is, by definition long lasting, ideally for life.

Myself, I often see this myth as kind of a trap, used to lure the unwary into marriage, or that's what it was originally. When people fell in love and were powerfully consumed with the urge to make babies with eachother, the marital bond was there to keep them together even when they'd fallen out of love. Trapped.

People clearly fall in love. Society is comfortable with that, glorifies it. It's normal. Most people fall in love.

What society hasn't quite come to terms with, though we're getting better at it, is that falling out of love is just as normal. Sure, people do stay in love for life. But it's not the norm. The norm is that people fall in love and they also fall out of love.

We fudge the fact. Because we're looking for 'The One'. The one that will be for life. We feed ourselves lines like 'At the time I thought I loved her. But I didn't. I'm still looking'.

You're lieing to yourself. Because you're trying to convince yourself that love you fall out of isn't valid. The only valid love, will last forever.

Truth is, you probably did love her. And then you fell out of love with her. What you have to do is move away from the idea that you're looking.

Love, in the sense we mean it here- Romantic love- is an emotion. It is therefore, not necessarily going to last forever. It is entirely down to chemicals. You might be overwhelmed by this woman today and spend every waking hour thinking about her.

Next week could well be different.
You really can't predict how you are going to feel. The point is that the validity of how you feel today is not affirmed or negated by how you MIGHT feel in the future.

I'm not convinced that the Greatest Love Story of all time has to end with both parties ending up together for life. The Greatest Love ever could well last only a matter of months. The fact that both sides fall OUT of love again, doesn't mean that what they were in while it lasted was significantly more powerful than the love many people who are together for a lifetime feel.

And I think this is a major problem when people meet and have strong feelings about eachother. We're still trapped in this mindset that runs as follows;

Strong emotional, physical and intellectual connection of extreme intensity (Love)= The One= Being together forever= Lifelong commitment.



It's false logic. It doesn't necessarily mean that at all. No particular reason it should. By following that false logic, a dynamic is introduced which doesn't need to be introduced.
On the one hand, a lot of people are, I think, actually quite scared of genuinely falling in love or being open to it, because they see that equation as being part of it. It worries them. They are worried that if they admit to themselves that they are actually in love, then if the other person also loves them, then by rights they SHOULD be planning for a long term future. And therefore they wall themselves off from allowing themselves to love.

On the other hand, a lot of people don't respond well to the love dieing. Because they don't accept that as the normal result. A Romantic love that NEVER dies is in fact, the oddity. That's not to say a Romantic love can't turn into a genuine lasting friendship, but the passionate romantic phase, it's unusual if it lasts forever.

I think we are false in our assumption that it has to last forever for it be genuine. The more I think about it, the more I think that a number of the transient, fleeting sensations I've had in my life are just as deserving of being considered love as any definition of love. Because in the moment, they were.

This idea that you are going to find one person who you are going to love for the rest of your life and be with for the rest of your life, what need have we for such a stultifying ideal?
Personally, I think that expectation can ruin it. I look at a lot of my romances in my life and if I'm honest, one of the main things that ruined them was that there were expectations on them.

I think the best way to view these things is this 'It feels good now. Right now, you're my world. You might not be in a few months. Someone else might be. But let's just enjoy it for now, and when it's over, it's over'.

Myself, I'm still not convinced that actually having in your head as an ideal of love the idea that one day you'll find someone who you'll love for the rest of your life is particularly inspiring or even that healthy.
Is it such a bad thing to love many people over the course of a lifetime?

Sometimes I look at some of the more intense flings I've had. I can think of one where I met her on the Friday night, we went back to mine and must have had sex about four or five times and talked for hours in between. Then we went to the pub, it now being Saturday afternoon and then went back for more, before finally parting company on the Sunday evening. I did see her one more time after that, we sat and talked but we both knew that it was impractical. There was no way we could fit into eachothers lives at all. But was it love? Well, it was only a forty eight hour thing, but during those hours, it was exceedingly passionate.

I'll certainly never forget her.

And this kind of leads me to my general conclusion. The love itself, the Romantic love bit might last for years, it might last for months, it might last for just a few days.
But what makes it love?

That you'll never forget them as long as you live.

I think for me, that's kind of when you know something has pretty much run its course. The love bit is the exuberation of excitement, the basking in the beauty of a soul that fascinates, it's not physical, it's a connection of mind, body and soul. And the love bit is kind of like an absorbing of their aura, and your aura seeping in to them.
I think once that has happened, it doesn't matter if it lasts forever, or ends the following week. A part of you will always feel them etched in your soul.

We shouldn't cling on here. This is the problem, the expectation it should last. If it lasts, it lasts. But if you force it, you'll spoil it, as divorces so often prove.People who once loved eachother hating eachother. When if they'd walked away from eachother a long time ago, their love would still exist as a memory.



I guess my view is this. When we fall in love with someone, we shouldn't fill our heads with thoughts of 'This is the One', or start considering long term futures. We should take it as here and now emotion, enjoy the bubbling flood of feeling another soul dance with our own, the probing of another mind and body. It should be all about standing hand in hand in art galleries, transcendental conversations over meals, dancing with eachother in the centre of dancefloors, wild passionate love making, it should be an affirmation of life and the unique ability of the human mind to become at one with another.

And what will be left over at the end of it all? Not bitterness, because these things are meant to end and we should accept that the falling out of love is as fundamental a part of the process as falling in it. We should learn to fall out of love with the same joy we fell in to it, and be ready to move on to new loves.

Because if we do it properly, there can still be a joy in the completion of a beautiful love, the final moment we stroke their cheek and know that though it is the end, it's good to know that;

'You won't forget about me, as long as you live, as long as you live,
you won't forget about me, I promise you this, as long as you live'.