Friday, February 7, 2014

The Removal of Love

LOVE - verb (1) a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. (2) a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. (3) sexual passion or desire.
If it was up to me, as "Love's #1 Fan", I would get rid of the word LOVE from the dictionary. I would even go so far as to completely remove it from our vocabulary. And to go even further, I would imprison anyone who prematurely uttered the word love from their mouth. I would then replace it with a different four letter word, one that also begins with “L”. But this word would be easier to understand and would not cause so much confusion in our lives. I am confident that replacing the word LOVE with the word LIKE, ninety-nine percent of the frustration, games and drama would disappear in our lives, especially in our relationships.

Think about it, how many individuals invest their time and energy into sinking relationships, and then turn around and blame its demise on love? How many individuals put up with being lied to, dishonored, disrespected and cheated on, only then to use "love" as a justification as to why it's ok to stay? I have seen more people than I could count, stay months and even years in unhappy and unfulfilling relationships. And then these individuals say they do it because of love. I don’t know about you, but if it came to being happy and liking someone, or being miserable and being in love...I’m gonna pick like and happy every time.
LIKE - verb (1) to take pleasure in; find agreeable or congenial. (2) to regard with favor; have a kindly or friendly feeling for a person,. (3) to find attractive.
Now before you go chastising me and my outlook on being an insensitive, unfeeling bastard of a man, let me assure you that I am a very happy guy. I like and love "The One" and our son so much, that I would willingly lay down my life for them at any moment. I believe this is because I now understand what love really is. I now understand that liking the person you are with is just as important, if not more important than loving them. But as it goes, I didn’t always see things that way at first. There were times when I stayed in unhappy and unfulfilling relationships. For years I stayed in a relationship where I was miserable because of love, or from what I thought love was. There was a time when an ex and I very much thought we loved and cared about each other. In fact we cared about each other so much, we tried to make a relationship work that we should have never even started. The truth is, we were completely wrong for each other.

Yes, there were some things we had in common and there were some good times we shared while we were together, but at the end of the day we were like fire and gasoline: great on its own, but dangerous when put together. We both stayed and tried our hardest to make the relationship work, but no matter what we did, we could not make each other happy and neither one of us wanted to hurt the other person. What we didn’t realize was that we were hurting ourselves the most. My takeaway from that relationship was if I was going to spend the rest of my life with someone, it was real important that I liked that person as much as I loved them. That is why I am on a crusade to remove LOVE from the dictionary. If we didn't use it so often or prematurely, I believe all of the confusion will disappear. I believe we will be able to see things more clearly. I believe we will be able to make our choices and decisions without second guessing each other. There will be no vacillating, and no going back and forth revisiting toxic relationships. Instead of making choices and decisions which we will look back on with regret, we will have the skills and tools to make the right choice for the right reason. As a result, we will no longer be able to go back and use love as an excuse...

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