Sex and the City style article here, but we ask the genuine question, can love ever be enough? When Love Actually and other movies are always spouting the unquestioned “truth” that “love is all you need,” do we actually believe it anymore?
Look at the facts. If love was ever going to be enough, then divorce wouldn’t exist and falling out of love with someone wouldn’t even happen. Both of these things happen, and very often, so why do we put so much faith into love when evidently it isn’t enough for us?
Optimism and being a hopeless romantic, as most of us are. However, relationships are complicated and require a lot of hard work from both parties in order to work out. I’m not saying love isn’t important because obviously it’s a necessity, but there are many other things that need to be paid attention in order to make a relationship happy and long lasting. Love is subjective and means different things to absolutely everyone. Commitment, determination, forgiveness, empathy, trust, honesty, friendship, attraction etc. are all arguably equally important as the feeling of being in love with someone. If one of these fails, then the whole relationship is destined to fail.
Cheating happens when people still say they love each other (though people always say that it can’t have been love) but there’s a missing ingredient. But why should trust and commitment failing instantly mean that the love a person felt for someone was never real either? Amicable break ups can happen because sometimes that love is still there, just a multitude of situations and different factors have played into the relationship. Love isn’t all you need, love itself needs more than that, let alone a whole relationship.
We have all seen friends, family, and even ourselves in relationships that seemed perfect with two people that were undeniably in love with each other, but months or even years later this fizzles out, not because the love has changed but because the situation or people have. This leads into a bigger question though, where is the line between being in love with someone and loving someone? The argument around the two very different feelings stems from the difference between the initial falling in love with someone where you are still finding things out about them and the relationship is still very much in the ‘honeymoon’ phase, and loving someone is everything that comes after that with the hard work of keeping up the romance and making the effort for each other. The first is easy and only requires two people who are compatible really, the other is the one that needs the hard work. Falling in love is almost definitely more fun than loving someone, hence why summer romances are fleeting but fond memories, but love is the one that lasts and requires all of the other factors mentioned above. But then surely as love is a part of both falling in love and loving someone, it’s the other factors like trust, honesty, friendship and commitment that actually make relationships last.
Maybe, just a thought, we should stop relying on love and work on the other things that really make a relationship last. Love is a part, but definitely not all of what you need.
Edited by Jenine Tudtud
Sources:
https://media.giphy.com/media/GE9OOsH8Bs9Us/source.gif
http://quotations.about.com/od/sadquotes/a/heartbreak3.htm
http://quoteaddicts.com/topic/love-is-all-you-need-quotes/
http://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2598961
http://cdn-media-2.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2014/06/5-Foundations-E…