One time, I told a lady that I’d very much want to be in love with the person I get to marry. Her reply was that my wife would be lucky, as loving her would make her happy. She was right, but that wasn’t even the point.
I want to love my wife not necessarily because it will make her happy, but because it will make me happy. I have loved before and I liked how it felt. With all its chaos, I’d choose it over the agony of managing the affections of a person I cannot properly cultivate love for.
I understand love to be inherently selfish, it only manifests selflessly. It usually seems as though when we love people, we do them a favour but deeply, love manifests more to our benefit than to those we love. It is more about what it reveals about us and teaches us to be.
I do not think that finding someone who will love us is a bigger problem than finding someone we can love. We want to be loved, but even more so, we want to know that we are capable of loving with the same intensity with which we want to be loved.
We may not like to admit it but what we miss more about the people we have once loved is that capacity to go out of our way for them. The realization that we can be so heroic and kind, makes us feel beautiful and good. And humans always want to think of themselves as good.
This is why we’re compelled to forgive those we love. We may bring it up to guiltrip them and make it seem like we did them a favour by forgiving them, but the truth is that we had no choice. Love makes us inherently good, kind and understanding. This is what we miss about it.
We yearn to know more about the extent of our own goodness not the extent of how deserving we are of goodness. To be loved is to always be at the receiving end, to always feel grateful. But gratitude is a heavy burden that frustrates us than it makes us feel great.
It may look like a good idea to simply settle for those who love us even if we do not love them, but it is agonizing in the long run. It is also possible to learn to live and make peace with it. But to have love both ways, is a rare peace. I hope you find that.
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