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In looking back over past columns I have written about Valentine’s Day, I think I may have been a bit harsh. It is easy to give in to the cynicism that often surrounds the notion of romantic love, and I confess I have often done so. Yet, I have been married to the same woman for 45 years and, incredibly, she still laughs at my jokes. I have decided my stable relationship means I have forfeited the right to cast a cynical eye towards love.
Love cannot help it if it is sometimes silly or trite. Anyone viewing a romantic relationship from the objective observation of a spectator is prone to see it as corny at best. From our jaundiced perspective, lovers tend to appear as lunatics. How often have we whispered to ourselves, "What on earth does she see in him?" Thus, to all but the lovers themselves, love seems an abnormal state causing people to do strange things like write bad poetry.
Love is not blind, it just doesn’t care. Contrary to popular notion, lovers are not unaware of the flaws in one another. Lovers don’t view them as flaws. One thing I truly believe is you cannot have too many people love you.
There is no such thing as too much love. View it this way. Since some relationships don’t last, it is always nice to have a backup plan. It may be better to have loved and lost than never to have at all, but it is even better to find more love after the first one has gone. Love is not necessarily lovelier the second time around, it may just be better appreciated.
Lust is often confused with love. In the best relationships, lust turns into love. Regarding love and marriage, the song goes, "You can’t have one without the other," but of course you can and often do. It is a lot more difficult to have romantic love without a little lust. Love without lust is like Mexican food without jalapenos.
Reality TV gives love a bad name. Any show that has a bachelor vying for a bunch of young women or vice versa is not about love. In fact, it exposes the shallowness of some people’s definition of the word. Love is not superficial, but lots of people are.
Really superficial people can be happy too, so long as they mate with other really superficial people. These individuals get turned on by big rings and weddings. They tend to think the bigger the gift, the deeper the love. That’s what makes them superficial.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but too much makes the heart eventually wander. We weren’t built to live without love. Sometimes, to paraphrase Stephen Stills, "We settle for loving the one we’re with."
I often ponder my mom and dad’s relationship. They married young and had me just a year into their marriage when they were still kids themselves. Dad reacted to my crying by harboring not-so-secret thoughts of wanting to throw me out of the window (and they lived on the third floor).
They had some incredibly intense, disturbing fights. There were times when I was a kid I thought the marriage couldn’t last. Dad worked crazy shifts, while Mom was stuck in the house with two kids. What kept them together was they couldn’t live without one another.
They didn’t have a lot of money, but always found a way to dress up and go out. Mom all dolled up, Dad in his black Italian silk suit. They were a damn handsome couple. I didn’t know anyone else in the family who stepped out like my mom and dad.
She got angry when he died and left her alone at the age of 67. Her anger was directed at him, as if he had deserted her for a better place. It was as if by dying, he had gone to cheat on her with another woman.
How dare he leave her alone in this world? That was when I figured out there was no heaven. His heaven was here with her. He recognized no other without her, no matter how much they fussed and fought through the years. He would never have preferred another place. No way they could have stopped him from trying to return to her.
That’s my standard for real love.
