What is it - this crazy little thing called love?
Real Stories with Mary Lynch • Published 9 Feb 2012 09:00
0 Comments
To me love is like the wind, you cannot see it, you cannot touch it, it is impossible to grasp but you certainly can feel it. Like the wind it can be soft and gentle, sometimes warm and comfortable, many a time hot (even in Ireland) and then sometimes it can be so uncomfortable, that is when it blows up a storm and knocks you off your stride. Of course all this depending on what type of love you are talking about.
Do you remember that first romantic love when you thought you would die without him or her, they had no faults, were too beautiful to describe and to your dying day you will never forget that feeling. I bet you do so do I, but I dare not write about it in case he is reading this article, (even though he was not on the northern side of the border) so I am going to tell you about my friend's first love.
She was fourteen years old and beautiful (I know this because she is still beautiful). She was visiting her aunt and cousins on the coast of Co Claire for the summer. Being brought up with three sisters and an overprotective mother her contact with the opposite sex had been limited so to her the male species was from another planet (still is for most of us females!).
As she was wandering around this small coastal village reading her love stories, he came there on his holidays.
Tall, thin and beautiful she describes him and so exotic with his English accent. An accent she had not heard before as this was in the early sixties when his accent was not even familiar on the streets in the North and exotic is not how a lot of us would have described it at the time!
Anyway he took a shine to her and she fell in love, he could do no wrong and of course it had to be that one summer when the sun never stopped shinning (maybe this was a sign she thought as she wrote about her true love in her dairy).
She still vividly remembers that first game of tennis they played and she was so nervous that she missed the ball completely and the man keeping the score shouted fifteen / love. Was this another sign she wrote as he was fifteen and they were in love.
He was so sophisticated and he did that very glamorous thing at the time, he smoked. She remembers picking up the butt of his cigarette and kissing it (well it had been on his lips too and it was the closest thing she had ever gotten to a kiss).
She just knew this was going to last forever; they were like Romeo and Juliet.
'Did you ever get a real kiss from him?' I asked softly.
'Yes,' she sighed, 'and I thought I would die from happiness.'
Unfortunately the summer had to end as summers tend to do and she had to return home and he rode off into the sunset to somewhere wonderful (probably an overcrowded city in England). A place where everyone would love him - how could they not.
Back at school she couldn't concentrate on anything, her true love was gone and she was heartbroken. How could anyone understand? She just knew that no one had ever felt like this before. She had read the love stories but this one couldn't be written as there were no words to describe it (hope you are still with me on this).
He wrote every week but this all drifted away in time and for the rest of her life every other male was compared to him and not one of them ever measured up, not even the man she married seven years later.
'Did you ever see him again?' I asked in a quiet voice as I didn't want to break the spell of this true love story.
'I think so,' she replied. 'I think I saw him a few years ago when I was down visiting my cousin.'
'And…..' I said with anticipation.
'And he was sitting at the next table in the restaurant…well I think it was him.'
'Well… was he still beautiful?' I asked with a sigh. (Yes men can be described as beautiful)
'Yes,' she continued, 'he was but…'
'But what'…I asked shocked that anything could be amiss.
'But when he took his beef sandwich and opened it up to look in at the meat, the romance was over…can you imagine why anyone would want to look in at the meat,' she continued as a strange look came over her face as she remembered how her first love died, nearly fifty years later!
Maybe there is a message in this story - don't bother looking for that first love as you may not like what you find. Imagine he or she might look into their sandwich - how unromantic is that.
So back to reality, what is love? And have you ever really felt it.
I know I have and can remember the exact time it happened. Even then I had no doubt that not only would it last but that it would grow. It happened in Enniskillen at 3.55 on the 13th November 1987 when my daughter was born. I can still see that wee face, that long thin body, those long fingers and you know I was right, it never died. It just grew and grew and if you think you cannot love two people at one time let me assure you can as when her brother was born just over two years later I was smitten again.
This is called unconditional love. No matter what they do the love never changes, maybe you will not always understand why they do certain things but how would you as each of us has our own unique journey with our own individual lessons.
I also loved their father but that love changed, sometimes you have to let go and move on from your partner and always from your children (hopefully still loving them both).
They say love in your heart isn't put there to stay; love isn't love until it is given away. But how does one give what one has not got as to truly love others you have to start with yourself.
For centuries children in school have been learning about Romeo and Juliet, the greatest love story ever written they say, the greatest or the sickest I ask you? Is this what we really want to teach our children about love?
What they had was not a love for each other, they had a need for each other and neediness is the enemy of love.
I once read in a book where I thought the author summed up love very well.
He said in love one and one usually equals one - that is when one of the partners is the dominant person and takes over the other.
A worse case scenario is when one and one equals zero which is when the two needy people destroy each other with co-dependency.
He concluded by saying that true love is when one and one equals not two but three. That is the love each of the partners has for themselves, this is then added to the love they have for each other making up a wholesome relationship.
Sounds like sense to me, so this Valentine's Day that is what I wish for both you and I - in all our relationships.
Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our Opinion archives.
