Love is a complex emotion. I feel it entails more suffering than bliss. And what causes this suffering? According to me, it is the constant attempt to prove your love that causes one to suffer. Here I am specifically speaking about romantic love. Consequently the toughest relationship to maintain is a love relationship. Those who are in love or have been in love may perhaps vouch by what I say. For others, it is best left to personal experience because this is something that cannot be explained. One needs to jump into the sea himself to know the depth.
I myself am in love. Here I would like to specify that it is genuine and serious love and not some silly infatuation that is a part of teenage life. These are beautiful days of my life. I fell in love at the age of eighteen. I believe experts used to say and still do that normally love doesn’t happen at the tender age of 17-18 etc. According to their ‘expert views’, an 18 year old is not mature enough to understand the intricacies of love and handle such a volatile relationship with ease. Now this perplexed me a lot. The government of most countries thinks it right to give voting rights, driver’s license, permission to marry, watch adult certified movies and go pub hopping to people who are 18 and above. Technically when we are 18, we become adults. And if adults can drink, drive and marry, they can most certainly do something as basic as fall in love. Thus having convinced myself I fell in love. Nevertheless it wasn’t a calculated move. To be true, I first fell in love and then convinced myself about the rightness of my decision.
I started my article by stating love as a bringer of miseries. I would like to build up on this point. Everyone has an idea about his or her perfect man/woman. So did I. For me, my man had to be a few years elder to me (I had this firm belief that older men are mature and a same aged partner is a pain in the neck. Men anyway are a pain in the neck). He had to be a non-smoker though alcohol was permissible occasionally. As far as his looks were concerned, he had to be good looking. But life is a gamble. On never knows for sure what does one’s cards contain. However, this unpredictability also lends a certain amount of interest to living. This will explain why I fell in love with an 18 year old boy who smoked and wasn’t exceedingly handsome. However he didn’t lack charm either. And since he is still in the growing up stage, he has long way to go towards becoming handsome. But as I said life is a gamble.
Our relationship started and it went pretty smoothly. I kept lecturing him about the harmful effects of smoking and persuaded him to quit. His friend circle was much into partying and he was much into his friends. Consequently he too was a lot into partying. Though I never objected, he knew well enough that I didn’t totally approve of it either. What sustained me through all of this was a line that my best friend had said to me: you can’t always expect guys to be the way you want them to be. She was right and I took solace from the fact that all guys have certain inherent traits, which no one can alter.
Despite everything we loved each other a lot. There was a lot of commitment and a wish to be together forever. But the share of miseries was intact. When he went for parties, I used to spend the night praying for his well-being. Every puff of smoke that he took would blow the life out of me. He knew all of this and assured me that he would quit soon. Then came a day when I got the biggest blow of my life. I had my first brush with infidelity or rather with a straying partner. He confessed that he had looked out of our relationship and had fallen for a girl who had become a close friend of his. Worse still, they had kissed on her birthday party. I had wept on previous occasions when we had some disagreement or when he had smoked and drank like crazy. Surprisingly, I didn’t shed a single tear or utter a sigh when this devastating truth was disclosed to me. I had already envisaged a situation where he falls for someone else. Thinking about the worst possible scenario prepares us for tough times. More than being hurt, I was enraged and confused. Enraged because I took it as an insult to my love and me and confused because I could not understand what was lacking in our relationship that he had to stray. He came to my place and apologised profusely. What more can I say that he had tears in his eyes. He wanted a second chance to mend everything and start afresh. I gave him that chance.
My friends supported me and showed confidence in my decision. I for one didn’t have anything to lose by giving him another chance. They said that since he had confessed everything, it showed that he loved me. I too loved him and valued our relationship. No wonder that I was ready to forget that he had been with another female. Thus burying everything, we started afresh and our relationship is going from strength to strength.
I might sound self-congratulatory if I say that I had handled the situation pretty well. I was calm and composed and pointed out to him his flaws very subtly. But this is how I have always been-acting according to the need of the hour. This episode hasn’t made me cynical about love. But my approach is slightly altered. I am involved and detached at the same time. After all everything is transient and impermanent in this world. Love too.
These are the kind of miseries that love brings with it. But it also makes one a good human being is what I believe. After everything that happened, my advice to people is: FALL IN LOVE. This is one emotion, which lets one experience all other emotions like anger, jealousy and misery. Life somehow seems richer and fuller.