On relationships and love in general;

First of all I want to remark that I previously thought I would never come to the point of writing something on love in this manner. This idea has only come upon me recently, probably by recent events in my personal life. I have, like others I think, for a long time assumed that love is a natural given thing. By doing so, I have asserted that love is the same for everybody and must therefore be experienced in the same ways that I experience it. However, this is a false form of analogy and I realize that now. I want to tell you and I can only tell you what my conception of love is and what role I think it should have in a relationship and how both factors should interplay. This however, must be seen as my conception and I therefore want to stress that I do not have the illusion that I am spreading the absolute truth here.

Let’s first begin with the concept of the relationship, since I have spoken about this before in previous blog posts. From my point of view, a relationship is an agreement between two people, from whatever sex, to call each other boy- and/or girlfriend. That is basically it. That is the theoretical framework which forms a relationship and all the rest which come with that concept are ‘extras’. I just call it extras, but I want it to be perceived as a neutral term, so please keep that in mind. These extras can come about in several ways and are in no way inherent to the concept of a relationship. It might be that these extras are there because of assumptions connoted to the concept of a relationship, but to make things easier I will take an example of such an extra. I will keep it simple and I will take sex as my example.

Whenever I endeavor in a relationship I more or less expect that I will continue to have sex with this person. Actually this is a bad example, because I never start out a relationship with someone I have not had sex with yet. Let’s take a hypothetical example then. Assume that someone starts out a relationship with someone else, called person A and B respectively. Would it be illogical that person A expects to have sex with person B? It might be perceived as being logical, but it actually isn’t for the following reason: no one is someone else’s property. This is a very fundamental given, which many agree with I hope. From this fundamental given follows the following argument; person A cannot decide for person B whether person B wants sex with him or her on a factual basis. This decision is based on assumptions. Even if person A asks person B whether person B wants to have sex with person A, person A must still assume that the person B speaks the truth.

There are many more extras which could pass the revue, but in general I think they all go through the process mentioned above. Sex is a practical thing in which it is pretty easily made clear whether one wants to have it or not, but it becomes more complicated with more abstract notions: notions as commitment, the idea of love and reliance for example. These can only be made clear through a verbal process from both parties wherein equality in a relationship plays a very important role I think. If this equality is disturbed, I think it is very likely that the truth value of the utterances made by both parties concerning these abstract notions will be disturbed as well as a consequence. This will probably lead to wrong assumptions and thus to a misunderstanding of each other when it comes to these, in my opinion, very essential notions.

I will now turn to the concept of love. I first of all want to make a distinction with falling in love, in order to avoid misunderstanding. Falling in love and actual love have little or even nothing to do with each other. It may be the case that one falls in love with a person and eventually will feel real love for this person, but one thing does not necessarily lead to another. Falling in love might be best described as a trick of nature, which enables a person to emotionally bind a person temporarily to another person in order for nature to do its work. Real love however is, unlike falling in love, a construction. On the on-line dictionary it is stated that love is: “a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person”, but I do not agree with that. The makers of the dictionary assume it to be that way, but that does not make it that way. First of all, you can also love yourself, so the “for another person” should be replace with “for a person”, I think. Furthermore does love necessarily express itself in affection?

I do not think so. I think love can be expressed in many ways, because being affected by someone is merely a feeling. Now I will commence in what I think love should be in a greater sense, so I will enter the realm of my assumptions here. I think love is a repetition of expressions of appreciation towards another person and the recognition of the reception thereof. That sentence was a mouthful perhaps, but I will accompany it with some explanations. Expressions of appreciation can take many forms and under these may fall the dictionary definition, namely passionate affection. I rather do it with words. I do not mean the literal utterance of “I love you” every now and then, but I am rather referring to non-literal things. If I write texts about things in order to share my opinions and views on a certain topic with a certain person or a certain people, that is an expression of appreciation from me towards he or she or them. That, however, is not yet love. Or at least it may be categorized as being blind love. Only until a reaction in whatever sort of way is received, by which the sender can recognize that the sharing of view has come across, true love is reached I think.

In that way I view myself actually only as physically heterosexual, because I love a lot of men as well. This might actually be a practical way to clarify the distinction between the activity of sex and the definition of love. My mother once told me that she would not be surprised if I showed up with a man one day at my parents’ house. I may certainly hope so, because I have done so several times, but she should just not expect me to have sex with that man.

I wrote this particular text for a particular reason, even though I think I am perfectly capable of defining how I view these concepts, I am not able, and even unwilling, to shove my views down anyone’s throat. The reason is actually to make these concepts clearer for myself and to persuade people to think about the assumptions they make when regarding such essential concepts. I have shared my views and opinions and this was my expression of appreciation towards you dear reader. Remember though that I do not necessarily love you. This can only follow from your reaction and my evaluation and possible appreciation thereof, but I usually assume that these are written with the best of intentions.

Now about the role of love in a relationship, or at least what I think what role love should have in a relationship. The description I have given of love should be the core of any good relationship you have with another human-being. If there is no appreciation from and towards the other person with whom you have the relationship with, then it does not make much sense to continue having this particular relationship. I want to stress at this point that appreciation is not the same as agreement. I often disagree with other people, but that does not mean that I do not appreciate their input. This is an essential difference. I usually appreciate it when people do not agree with me, because that gives me more inspiration usually. Love does not have to be more than that, yet that is already a lot. All the rest, the possible extras, such as sex and commitment in whatever degree, are not self evident, but assumed. If these assumptions happen to be exactly the same from the perspective of both parties, then there is no problem, at least not on the basis of these notions. On the other hand if these assumptions are not the same, then a problem is bound to show up. This can only be resolved in two ways; either ignoring the problem or resolving the problem. I prefer the latter one more and more and therefore I like to choose the path of words.