Love? Getting a better view

..::*+ Small Talk +*::..

Disclaimer: The post is not a “truth of life" or what-so-ever ideology. It’s based on experience and guidance from various sources and for reference purposes.

* Just fulfilling what I promised to post up last time.

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The fact is, everyone wants to be loved. The fact is, the frequency of in-love young couple increase exponentially with time for a given age. The fact is, the mean marriage age decrease with time passes. The fact is also that numbers of break-up & divorce increase with time. So once ago I asked myself a question: If one chooses to be in a relationship with someone, why they will break up? I wasn’t really understand that feeling, as that time I was still inexperience in a relationship. Until I broke up with her. Or rather, she broke up with me. There were quite a number of reasons for that, and after I linked them all up altogether, I came to a conclusion – We never know what will happen in the future:

1. We never know if we’ll fall in love with someone else who is prettier/ more handsome/ richer (it’s true)/ more attractive/ more elegant… and the list goes on.

2. We never know if the relationship will be “terminated” by our parents through their, um, let’s say “divine intervention”.

3. We never know if the relationship will be challenged and eventually broken by quarrels and arguments, or sickness of either party which will end in death of ourselves or our partner.

And again, the list goes on. But again, these uncertainties see a common basic element – The internal energy that keeps the bond in a relationship together. So what is this “internal energy” that you’re talking about? Simple, and it can be anything. See, some relationships are held together by so-called “not-seriousness” from both sides. “Well, we’ll try to tag along together and we’ll not really get serious in it to avoid hurting each other in the end”. Well, that’s a fair reason, because you’ll get hurt if you invested too much and in the end it just red-lighted with break up. Some other relationship is hold by materials. “Well, I’ll love him/her as long as he/she is rich.” So what will you do if one day he/she bankrupt? “Simple, I’ll just dump him/her and get another one”. Other example of this type of bonding can also be sex. “Well, he/she is good in bed and I love him/her because of that”… True enough, that could be the reason and yes, the list goes on and on again.

So come to the next part: Are these bonds strong? Well, it’s just a time-wasting question because obviously, they’re not. Else you won’t find so many break-ups and divorces in this world. Then how to keep a relationship strong, strong as in it is tough and can sustain pressure, deformation, repetition, challenges etc etc? I think it should come to a basic quote: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Can you see the point from here? See, obviously I don’t know who the enemy of my enemy, except myself of course, is. But I call him a friend because we share common enemy. I’m not talking about “I should couple with someone who has same enemy as mine”, but rather – the “something” that brings me and you together. And in Christianity, that “something” is Christ.

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.
Matthew 22:37

What it means here, you might ask. It means here that your greatest love is not your partner. It means if someone says to you that you’re his greatest love, then you better reject him/her. Just a joke, but the essence here is that Christ is the strongest bond that binds 2 souls together. I’ve seen lots of what-I-would-described-as-true-love relationship in a lot of Christians – both young and adults. That’s the type of relationship I would like to have in the future – A relationship and a family based of Christ. That we love each other because we both love Christ the most. The type of love, the direction of love, that nothing will tear us down. The my-so-called perfect love, that when we face problem, we’ll have a common ground to stand and fight for. I admit that in EVERY relationship there will be times when we encounter challenges, both light and tough, but it’s in the power of Christ that given to us, the very same power as the resurrection power that will keep us together.

I remembered last time when I was on train with my mentor back from church, I asked him about love – are we ready for it? And he told me lots of things that I never thought of. Things that normal person will never think of. It means here that he is abnormal la. Haha, just kidding. The first thing is that “what we (the guy and the girl) want to achieve together in a relationship.  It’s the problem of many relationship problems that we face today – a relationship without direction. Both the party don’t have a same goal that they want to achieve, that’s what kills a relationship. Together serve God is one of the strong goals. It’s also a long-term goal. A good direction also, no?

Next thing to think about is the quantity of commitment that we can put in. I’m not saying long-distance relationship definitely won’t work, but it is much much much harder to put in commitment in this case. Remember the scene “you jump, I jump” from Titanic? How many people will do so? Or how many would just say so but do “you jump, I say ‘bye bye’ to you”? Or make it simple, how can one who is far from you be by your side when you need him/ her to be there? Say I someday face accident or something (touch wood), will she be there to give me at least a smile of support? The commitment, it’s easy to say than to be done. Are we really ready to put in the commitment into the relationship? If we’re not, we might end up everything by hurting the partner, or ourselves being hurt. Without commitment, a relationship won’t last long.

I’ve seen people who just want to be with that person, no matter he/she is her/his boyfriend/girlfriend or not.

I’ve seen couples who don’t have any direction in their relationship.

I’ve heard couples who said "不在乎天长地久，只在乎曾经拥有", or “how long we be together, that’s the length we can go”.

I myself, had been hurt by a fail relationship before.

Love - getting a better view? 

Perhaps love,

Vincent