The paradox of love and relationships

The paradox of love and relationships
Many people who read this column write to me for advice – the kind I am not qualified to give. The advice they seek is almost always on what to do with heartbreak.

Sometimes, people write about heartbreaks that are caused by traditional factors - like a difference of religion or community or issues of sexual orientation. Sometimes their love has grown slowly, wrapping itself around their hearts like a creeper, a leaf and a flower at a time; sometimes slowly, eventful and dramatic like an electric storm.

Fast or slow, if you’re giving in to love it often means you don’t think too much of the practicalities involved. You just do that dangerous and beautiful thing – go with the flow. Eventually though, some feel unable to continue in the face of family opposition.

Often people in these relationships know that family or society will become an issue at some point, but hope love will be a reason to overcome it. “I know he may not choose to tell his family about us but right now it feels so good, I believe in us, in love to make a way for us. And if it doesn’t work out, fine, I’ll deal with it then,” one person told me when he had just fallen in love with a young man.

But at the moment of breaking up, these resolutions are hard to remember. At this juncture, often people say they are willing to change whatever the leaving partner wants, to make themselves acceptable, to bring the relationship back. They are willing to change religions, give up the dream of children, or that job in another country. We believe we have been left because we have fallen short. When we think we need only prove our love, by what we can give up for others, we mask from ourselves the truth that they left not because we do not love them or they us, but they have been unable to give up something.

Maybe we believe a little too much in love, don’t nurture our vulnerability enough – or perhaps they believe too little in it.

In short, though to be loved is a tremendously healing and enabling thing, people rarely change because of someone’s love for them. They do change sometimes because of their love for someone.

There are others who write because their love stories are complicated in the modern love sense. They may believe in more open-ended relationships but struggle with the practice. Sometimes they have an idea of themselves as too ‘liberated’ to want old-fashioned romance, and tell themselves they are cool with things when they are not. They articulate this dissonance in terms of fairness and justice, what is the right way to be and what is not. They describe the contours of the relationship – its micro-aggressions and inequalities, not as a reason to leave it but almost as an analysis of a design problem that can be fixed. They too wish to control outcomes, as who does not, but they wish to guard their vulnerability too much through it all.

They fear admitting that they want simply to know they are important and loved, in case they discover they are not. They almost imply this detail is trivial, when it is the heart of the matter. Maybe they don’t believe love is enough, because they don’t believe they are enough.

Too romantic, or too practical, we all suffer from the same paradox. Love, happening where it will, is unconditional, but relationships are not. It is a riddle that yields a very different answer with each different story.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.