Tag Archives: Relationships

Love vs. Romance

Posted in Love, Marriage, Relationships by

One of the things that interests me the most about relationships is how they break down.  Looking at divorce rates, it’s clear that a lot of them do.  But why?  What causes this breakdown?  It’s not a simple answer, as there are many things that can contribute to relationships breaking down.  One large contributor seems to be confusion about what romance is, and the difference between romance and love.

The Early Days of Love

In my last post (What is Love) I mentioned stages of relationships.  There is a lot of writing on this topic, and although I haven’t seen a consensus (on how many stages there are or what they all are) one item of agreement is relationships start in the romance stage.  This stage is sometimes called the discovery, passion or honeymoon stage, and is a stage of excitement.  You are learning about each other, and everything is new.

Studies of this stage have found that neurochemicals are released that give people a drug like high.  This high is believed to serve the evolutionary purpose of bringing people together to push the continuation of the species.  Biological urges if you will.  Thing is, this is a temporary stage.  Your brain can’t produce those neurochemicals indefinitely, and will stop after anywhere from a few months to a maximum of around two years.  It’s actually pretty fascinating stuff (read about it here if you are interested).

So when people talk about love as being like a drug, or people talk about being blinded by “love”, it’s true.  Love, or at least the romance stage of it IS like a drug.  The feelings are strong, and can be overpowering.  The problem is, it’s just a stage and isn’t sustainable.  And really, this stage is more lust and passion than real love.

Romance, Hollywood Style

Now here’s a problem; this stage is the way love is portrayed by Hollywood, television and in Romance novels.  For some reason a lot of people buy into this notion of what love is, and think that if this stage passes it means there’s something wrong with the relationship, or with the person.  One of the sites on stages of relationships summed this up nicely with the following quote:

One of the biggest illusions in our culture is that Romantic Love will last forever, if you just find the right partner

I can’t understand this.  TV, movies and books are forms of entertainment and we know that.  The purpose of entertainment is to make things, you know, entertaining.  In the world as portrayed by Hollywood police officers are constantly in gun battles or car chases.  Spies have crazy gadgets and regularly save the world.  And the staff at your local hospital are all sleeping with each other and trading off partners every couple of weeks (plus almost everyone in the world is beautiful and fit).  It’s escapism people, NOT REAL LIFE!!!  So why do so many people buy into the Hollywood view of love?  Even worse, why do people think something is wrong when their own life doesn’t measure up?

Look at this early stage of relationships and ask yourself this – is that REALLY what romance is about?  Is romance just lust and uncontrollable desire?  Personally, I say no.  Yeah I get that the early stage is really exciting, and it feels great.  But I don’t think that’s romance.  As great as it is, I don’t think the feelings during that stage are even love.

Think about something you are passionate about.  What does it mean when we say we are passionate about something?  Being passionate about something means REALLY enjoying it, and having strong positive feelings for it.  You can be passionate about all sorts of things: cooking, traveling, a sports team, whatever.  When people talk about passion in a relationship it’s the same thing.  You are passionate about the other person.  They are very important to you, and you care greatly for them.  Seeing them happy is a source of happiness for you.

I think romance is simply doing things to express that passion to the other person.  What are you really doing when you buy someone flowers, or take them out on a date night?  It’s not about the flowers or the night out, these are simply gestures to show someone that they are important to you.  It doesn’t have to be material things, it can be something as simple as an email or a text telling them you love them, or asking about their day.

To me romance is about caring about them and valuing them.  Be passionate about your spouse.  Care about them, and SHOW them that.  Everyone wants to know they are valued.  Everyone wants to know they are loved.

Looking for love (in all the wrong places)

I started this by talking about why relationships break down, and I think this is key.  Somewhere along the way (usually in long term relationships), we stop doing the little things that show the other person how much we value them.  We may not completely stop, but we don’t do it as often.  Maybe it’s the stresses of everyday life, jobs, parenting (which is a big one), balancing the budget or maintaining a household, I don’t know.  But over time in most relationships I think people start to take each other for granted.  It may not be intentional, but it happens all the same.

When this happens, I can see how relationships break down and affairs can begin.  If you are in an unhappy spot and questioning your relationship, and then you encounter someone who makes you feel beautiful again?  Makes you feel valued again?  Well, those neurochemicals start can start to take over and next thing you know you are doing things you know are wrong, but you don’t care because you feel alive again.

Here’s something I hate about the Hollywood portrayal of romance – it glamorizes affairs.  Let’s see if this sounds familiar – woman is in an “unhappy relationship”.  She is neglected/unappreciated/whatever by her husband.  She meets someone (probably a sensitive artistic type – let’s call him Artistic Joe) who fulfills her emotionally and they start a torrid love affair.  There is something about the relationship that makes it so it won’t work out between them and they are forced to part ways.  The woman goes on with her life, but knows that Artistic Joe was really her true love.  Sigh, so romantic.

I want to see a slightly different version of this story where the affair becomes the new relationships.  The new couple is happy at first, but then after 6 months to two years the love haze wears off and the person realizes that they’ve carried the same baggage that contributed to the failure of their previous relationship, and they are in the same boat as before and just as unhappy.  Plus they’ve broken up a family in the process.  Come on Hollywood, make my version – it’s got best picture written all over it!!!

Climbing Back Out

If you are someone who has found that your relationships don’t seem to last more than about 2-3 years, maybe it’s because what you are looking for isn’t sustainable.  That’s not to say we shouldn’t all strive for more romance in our lives.  We should.  Lets face it, it feels great to know that you are loved, to know that you are valued.  So why do so many of us let that slip? Are long term relationships incompatible with passion and romance?  I don’t think so.  It’s just that the nature of it changes somewhat.

I believe that in most troubled relationships both sides really do want things to work out.  They just don’t know how.  We just get into a hole so deep that things seem hopeless.  Well just as the longest journeys begin with a single step, you need to start somewhere.

If you feel as though your significant other hasn’t done anything lately to show you that they care, ask yourself this – when was the last time YOU did something to show them how much you care?  Don’t expect to receive and not have to give, it works both ways.  Ladies, us guys want to feel loved too.  Make your partner a priority and show them that you love them.

If it’s been while it may seem awkward at first, but stick with it. Don’t worry if your partner doesn’t return it right away.  Just as seeing someone else laugh will usually make you at least smile, your actions are bound to have an effect.  It’s a good way to take that first step. You may never reach that neurochemical induced high of the early days, but that is unsustainable anyhow.  However just because that’s gone, it doesn’t mean you can’t still have a great future.

What is Love?

Posted in couples, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Romance by

One of the things that started this journey for me was being told by my wife that she never “truly” loved me.  For anyone who has never been there let me tell you, that is NOT an easy thing to hear.  Thinking about it, I realized I didn’t even understand what that meant?  How can you love someone, but not “truly” love them?  What exactly is love anyhow?

Trying to understand love, I found that I had more questions than answers.  So if you are looking for a definition of something where do you turn?  The internet of course!!!

First I looked at the Merriam-Webster definition of love, and then I looked at the Wikipedia description.  Both Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster have a number of things in common, as the words affection, unselfish, devotion attraction and desire appear in both definitions.  Both sources also mention different types of love.

Types of Love

Are there different types of love? I love my parents; I love my siblings, nephews and nieces. I love my friends, I love my children, and I love my wife. Are these loves all the same? Or are there actually different types and degrees of love? It seems pretty obvious that there are different degrees of love. I definitely have a different love for my children than I do for my friends, never mind my wife. But it also looks like there are commonalities across all the types of love as well.

Is love unselfish/selfless?

Do I have a sense of affection for all of them?  Yes, I definitely do.  Is it unselfish?  That’s a tougher call.  By selfish do you mean am I expecting anything back?  Nothing material perhaps, but I think there is an expectation that love will be returned in some capacity.

For parents out there, here’s an experiment for you.  Try not showing your children any affection for a few days, maybe a week, and see what happens (I suppose the experiment is age dependent, because if your children are teenagers they probably won’t notice – sigh).  But if they are younger I suspect they will start to get confused, and hurt.  They will realize something is wrong, and probably get anxious and scared.  Alright, don’t ACTUALLY do this, as it would be cruel.  But imagine it all the same, and I suspect you will agree with me.

The same happens with spouses.  If there is a feeling that the love is one sided it can create a distance and will definitely put stresses on the relationship.  So no, I don’t think love is necessarily unselfish.  One of the stereotypes of men and women is that men are cold and women have more of a need for affection.  Ladies, don’t believe it!!!  Guys have the same emotions and feelings that you do.  We may bottle them up a bit more, but we all need to feel loved.  We all need to know that our spouse cares for us.  When we stop feeling it?  Well, that hurts, and that’s where all sorts of problems can begin.

A variation on unselfish is the idea of being selfless.  I think being selfless means being able to put the needs of another before your own needs.  There is definitely an element of that in love, especially when it comes to people who are truly dependent on you (such as children).  As a parent, you definitely need to put the needs of your children before your own.  And I guess that applies in all relationships.  But it is not something that you should do all the time.  You still need to make time for yourself as an individual, and be willing to put yourself first sometimes.  So in love it seems you walk a fine line between putting the needs of your loved ones before your own when required, but still making time for yourself as an individual.  I call this balancing the “we” with the “me”.

Devotion

How about devotion?  I think this one is definitely true of love, there is a sense of devotion.  I know that if any of my friends, family members, children or spouse needed me, I would always be there for them.  And I know that those people would always be there for me if I needed them.  I could call them any time of the day, and they would do their best to support me.

Desire

The last item in the common language list is desire.  I’m assuming that desire here means physical attraction/sexual desire.  This is one that is definitely NOT part of the common thread of different types of love.  Hopefully no one desires their parents, children, siblings etc.  Because, well, that would be a bit weird.  And it just doesn’t seem right.  Plus I’m pretty sure there are laws against that in some places.  Hopefully they DO desire their spouse or significant other, though I suppose that level of desire can change over time.

Then there’s desire for friends.  That’s a difficult one as I believe that is how many affairs start.  Lots of relationships start with friendships, so yes I believe people can desire their friends.  But doing so puts you in a position that can get you into a lot of trouble.  So while it can happen, I strongly advise against it.  To take that one step further, I think that BECAUSE it can happen, people should make a conscious effort to not become friends with a member of the opposite sex (or same sex I guess, lets just call it your gender of preference) that they find attractive or desirable.  You can be friends with someone, but you need to be conscious that intimate sharing of emotions or feelings puts you at risk for having the friendship develop into something more (especially if your relationship is in a troubled place at the moment).  Some people are cool with that, but for me monogamy is a big deal.  I would prefer to not put myself in a situation that could develop into something more.

So far I figure affection and devotion are prerequisites of all forms of love.  A degree of selflessness is also important, but you need to balance that with taking care of yourself as an individual.

Spousal relationships

How does a spousal relationship differ from any of the other ones?  One of the differences is that is starts with some sort of attraction.  A wise woman once told me that relationships often start with lust, and if you are lucky they will develop into love (thanks Mom!!!).  Normally this is a physical attraction, but in the world of social media and online relationships, the attraction can also be more in how a person presents themselves in written form.  This initial attraction (whatever its form) causes both parties to want to learn more about one another, and this early stage of a relationship is characterized by excitement.  You are learning about the other person, and everything is “new”.  There is usually an intimate sharing of experiences and beliefs, and this intimate sharing will naturally give rise to emotions.

As a side note, that is why this sort of intimate sharing with a friend that you find attractive is a big no-no to me.  It puts you in a situation where things can easily develop into something more.  People sometimes say that affairs “just happen”, I say that’s total crap.  People make conscious decisions that put them in a position for affairs to happen.  You actually want to stay true to your spouse?  Don’t put yourself in that position!!!  An affair starts at an emotional level before it becomes physical.  And in some ways, the emotional side of an affair is harder to break than the physical.  Anyhow, enough with the rant.  Back to love, specifically love in spousal relationships…

This is where relationships get themselves into trouble.  They start with the new and exciting.  In the early stages there is no shortage of passion.  And let’s face it, desire and lust can make you overlook some of the shortcomings of a relationship that may become evident later.  This early courtship stage of a relationship is the way that relationships are portrayed in romance movies and books.  But as much as both parties may want it to last, things can’t be “new” forever.  So the same characteristics of love that you find in any loving relationship need to bloom.  Genuine affection has to be there, as does devotion for each other and a degree of selflessness.

As the “new” wears off, the nature of love changes (look up “stages of relationships”, there’s tons of great material out there).  But it’s important that both parties do things to try and keep the romance side of the relationship alive.  This isn’t difficult in the early years, but once more time passes, and/or you add kids to the equation it becomes harder.  There has to be legitimate effort made to keep things fresh, it is not something that will just happen on its own.  A lot of couples likely fail at this, and I will include myself in those guilty of it.

So what does any of this really tell me about love?  Well for starters love is complicated, there are many facets to it.  I don’t pretend to understand it, but I do recognize that you can’t take it for granted.  Love may start with passion and excitement, but to maintain it over time takes effort.  People need to recognize that, and be willing to put in that effort to maintain it.

Just doing the zombie shuffle

Recently I watched the movie “Warm Bodies”.  Great movie if you haven’t seen it, it’s kind of like Romeo and Juliet meets the zombie apocalypse (complete with the balcony scene).  Except instead of the Montagues and Capulets we’ve got a star crossed romance between a human and a zombie.  Yes, very strange.  But at the same time surprisingly great.

In the opening scene of the movie there’s a scene with zombies shambling through an airport.  There’s a voiceover from the main character explaining that this is his life.  He’s a zombie.  He doesn’t know what his life was like before or how he got that way, this is just what he is, and he spends his days walking around bumping into things.

As opening scenes go I thought it was great (and pretty funny too).  But when I was thinking about it later I thought holy crap, that’s really how most of us live our lives.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not what the writers/directors intended.  And I suppose it says something about me that I’m trying to find meaning in a monologue about how zombies spend their time.  Anyhow, I digress…

Think about it for a moment though, and look at relationships.  Does ANYONE really have any idea what they are doing?  Did any of us get classes on relationships?  Did anyone teach us what’s healthy and what isn’t?  Hell no, we just kind of walk around bumping into things.  We make things up and try to figure it out as we go.

I remember when my wife and I came home from the hospital with our first child.  We walked into our house and put him on the ground.  The home that we had known was now being invaded by this little sleeping person strapped in a car carrier.  I can’t remember who said it, but we looked at each other and one of us said, “now what”.  We went and took a look and were a bit shocked to find that our child didn’t come with a manual.  There was also no course at the hospital that we had to pass before we were allowed to bring him home.  Suddenly we were parents, and it was up to us to discover what that meant.

We spent the next few years learning and I’m sure we made some mistakes along the way.  The bumps and bruises healed, and any psychological damage we did hopefully won’t surface for a few years yet (at least until he’s out of the house).

A few years later we had a second child, and strangely he didn’t come with a manual either.  But that was alright, because we were veterans now and we knew what we were doing.  Except, well, we didn’t.  It seems our second child was different from the first and the same rules didn’t apply.  We now found ourselves having to learn things all over again.

I think that’s how life goes – it presents us with situations and challenges.  We do our best and usually we figure things out (or at least think we do).  But sometimes we can’t figure things out on our own.  Sometimes the things we try don’t work and we find ourselves lost, not knowing what to do or where to turn.  And it is in these moments where things break down that we start looking for help.  We may turn to our spouses, families, friends, books, priests or whatever is a source of comfort for us.  Some of us also choose to struggle on alone.  We realize that we’ve been doing the zombie shuffle, just stumbling through life bumping into things and seeing what sticks, but now we don’t know what to do.

That’s what happened to me about a year and a half ago.  One day while sitting back watching TV with my wife of almost 13 years, I noticed her body language was somewhat “off”.  I asked her if everything was alright, and next thing I knew my whole world was crumbling around me.  She told me she wasn’t happy, she never “truly” loved me, she settled for me because she thought that I was as good as it would get, and that she didn’t know if she wanted to be married anymore.  There was lots of other fun stuff, but that sums up the important bits.

That experience turned my whole world upside down.  I started through the different cycles of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance (though I will admit I periodically relapse through any one of them).  I had to accept that my life as it was had changed, and I needed to redefine my future.  To understand that I figured I really needed to think through some concepts that I had thought I understood.

I thought I understood things like happiness, commitment and love.  I thought I understood what it meant to be a spouse, and to support the person you love.  But honestly I found I didn’t understand anything at all.  I thought I had been a good husband, but looking critically in the mirror I found that I didn’t necessarily like everything I saw.

A year and a half later my wife and I are still together, but we also have a long way to go and I don’t know what the future holds for us.  I would like to think that those events have helped me grow and become a better person.  The one thing I do know however is that my story is not unique.  I’ve met enough people with similar stories to know that I’m not alone.  It seems a lot of us have been shuffling through our relationships, bumping into things and trying to figure out what works.  Through introspection, reading, and especially talking to other people I gained some new insights, and started on my own thoughts on what it takes to succeed in life and love.

This isn’t about me or my life – not really.  That was the motivation and the starting point for this blog.  I’ll reference things that I’ve seen or done because hey, that’s what I know.  What I really hope is to use this as a way to continue to develop my own thoughts on assorted things related to what I think should be the most important things to us – life and love.  And maybe at the same time share those thoughts with others who may be looking for some direction, or just something to read.

I encourage any feedback.  I’ve learned a lot through reading comments on other forums and blogs, and think that all different perspectives provide some value.  Of course having comments means that someone has to be reading this (someone other than my mom, a couple buddies and someone who thought this was actually zombie related).  But hey, we all need to start somewhere.

So for anyone who joins me on this journey, thanks.  Hopefully we can all learn more about ourselves, and we can stop shuffling around and bumping into things all the time.  I guess that’s how people learn.  Try something and see if it works.  If so do it again.  If not, try something different.  I would like to think we can give each other guidance to make the bumps less frequent and a little less painful.  We’ve all been doing the zombie shuffle for long enough.  Lets try to find a better way together.