One of our time’s major assumptions is that if love is genuine, it must, by definition, be forever. Genuine connections are always and naturally associated with long-term partnerships.
Ocasionally, you will spend hours messaging each other I will love you forever quotes. This is the time when love is at its pnnacle, and you want to make sure it doesn’t go away.
As a result, it seems nearly impossible for us to see the end of a relationship after only a short time – a few weeks, five or ten years, or anything less than our or the partner’s death date – as anything other than a problem, a failure, and an emotional catastrophe caused by someone’s fault, most likely our own.
Can we love forever?
There are some who believe they have failed since their marriages have only lasted 32 years. We appear fundamentally unable to trust that a relationship could be at once sincere, meaningful and important. And yet at the same time fairly and guiltlessly limited in its duration.
Of course, there are a few compelling reasons for our collective admiration of the life-long love tale. Many of the joys and qualities of partnerships take time to manifest themselves after trust has been formed and loyalty has been completely proved.
What to do to love forever?
When two people know it’s forever, they’ll work harder than they’ve ever worked before; there’ll be no way to avoid some necessary but unpleasant issues; they’ll do everything they can to understand the mysteries of the other’s psyche; they’ll show reserves of tenderness and vulnerability they’ve never shown before.
They will learn to apologize and reach a modesty about their own shortcomings. They will grow up. And in the meantime, day-to-day, they will sample the modest but genuine pleasures of cozy Sunday evenings together and shared walks in country parks. Not least, children always benefit.
However, we must recognize the risk of ruthlessly and normatively denying any genuine demands of short-term love since the allures of the long-term are so evident in our communal imaginations. It’s an arrangement that ought to be understood as a state in its own right, not just as a pathologically stunted or interrupted version of a long-term partnership.
When the love isn’t forever
There’s a lot that can go well in a short-term relationship: – When two individuals realize they don’t own each other, they work hard every day to earn each other’s respect. Knowing that someone may abandon us at any moment isn’t only a source of uneasiness; it’s also a perpetual source of heartfelt appreciation.
When it isn’t forever, we can let differences lie.
If the journey is to belong, absolute alignment can feel key. But when the time is short, we are ready to surrender our entrenched positions, to be unthreatened by novelties and dissonances.
The distinctive things they have in their fridge and the peculiar things they like to watch and listen to aren’t affronts to our values, they are unthreatening invitations to expand our personalities. Very few of us come out well from being closely observed, 24 hours a day, in a limited space.
These may simply not be the preconditions for getting the best out of some of us. Our interesting and generous sides may need, in order to emerge, our own bedroom and bathroom, quite a few hours to ourselves, some space to read and think and a series of mealtimes alone staring rather blankly out of the window without having to explain how we feel. It’s not a sign of evil, just what we require to be the best version of ourselves.
What makes people’s relationships difficult is almost never the people involved.
It’s what we are trying to do with them. Inviting someone to marry you is really not a very kind thing to do to someone you love, because it’s going to drag the beloved into a range of really rather unpleasant and challenging things: doing the accounts with you, meeting your family regularly, seeing you exhausted and bleary-eyed after work, keeping the living room tidy, bringing up a child.
To really love someone – that is, to wish the best for someone – might more fairly mean foregrounding your best qualities for a few ecstatic months, then mutually and tenderly parting at check-in. – Long-term relationships reward some qualities – especially the administrative ones – but obscure others, for example, those related to skills at having interesting speculative conversations about ethics or psychology late into the night.
It should be no insult to determine that some people simply won’t be able to shine in the conditions of long-term love, and that it is very kindly playing up to their strengths to leave them long before we ever need to try to arrange a cutlery drawer with them.
We should beware of succumbing to the debilitating feeling that because it didn’t last forever, it can have been nothing at all. In other areas of life, we know that ‘going on forever isn’t ideal (even when something is very good).
We don’t necessarily think we have to stay in the same house all our lives though we might really like one we are in; we’re not betraying it or destroying it when we recognise that for a range of reasons it would be wisest to go elsewhere.
Is it true that first love lasts forever?
Many publications on the internet claim that your first love never stops. Even though the majority of these relationships do not last, love never dies. However, it is uncommon for these initial loves to go through all phases of love to reach the point of eternal love.
Rather, many of these relationships are remembered fondly because they never progressed beyond the first stage. The memories are full of good feeling and appeal, but they were never constructed on a foundation that would last over time.
According to one of the most widely held beliefs in our society, if love is genuine, it must, by definition, prove to be everlasting. Genuine connections are always and naturally associated with long-term partnerships in our minds.