Complex

Authors note: Trust me, if this doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone. I reread it, and I'm so filled with conflicting thoughts on this topic right now, I can't make head nor tails. I'm sorry its so topsy turvy, but it also personifies the way that I feel love is right now, just in the way it flows unevenly down thought currents. If you understand it, then leave a comment and explain, because I'd love to be enlightened!

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There are times when I want to smack some people upside their heads. That, or maybe ask them if I can biopsy their brains to figure out why the hell they think the way they do.

Love seems to create thought patterns that defy all logic or reason. We all have this fairy-tale vision of what love should look like, the sweet, the romance, the butterflies, the cutesy... but what does real love actually look like? When you're in the thick of the mess, the obstinate, impossibleness that really is love, what does it look like to you? What does it look like from the outside?

Take a couple I know. They're in the middle of this thing, or rather if you want to get technical in time frames, the beginning. Complicate matters that she has a kid. Not his kid, but a kid. That he loves like its his kid. As if love itself wasn't complicated enough. And they're young.

They're living a life most 30 year olds live. Jobs, daycare, stress, bills and all in this hard economic times. Add on top of this, neither were ever modeled positive, loving relationships. Enter in resentment, harsh words, name-calling, manipulation, anger... and the reckless emotions of young love. Can you feel the swirl, the way the current rips you around like you're in a whirlpool? Good. Now add some sharks.

This is their love. The sharks constantly threaten the health of us, just as love constantly threatens their individual worth. Love makes you so reliant upon the commitment and emotions of another person in relation to yourself, that it becomes like the life raft to keep you away from those sharks. What happens when that life raft starts to sink?

No one ever INTENDS for it to sink. A sharp word here, something overlooked there. Unspoken expectations. Disappointment, yelling ... a fight over money, over food, over whos turn it is to do the dishes. All of these can slowly deflate the life raft, and love begins to feel not so certain. A little bit unsafe in those already frightening waters.

So many times, love wraps us up in the emotions, even the commitment, that we build ourselves into nothing, or at least very little, without it. We become stuck in the thought of love without ever practicing the art of actually knowing love. Especially when you're young, when your raft starts to go under, even a little ... you can be driven to rash measures. You try to test the depth of their emotions.

What does that test look like, when you're young, in love and your life is sinking? Can it look like ... a couples counseling appointment? Talking about cheating? Walking out the door? Threatening your own life ... ?

Love should never have to be tested, we hear. The stories we read as kids, the movies we sit through. Love is just always known. Or is it? If you're standing in the midst of love... doesn't it feel sometimes as though its going to find a way to disappear? Don't lie and say no, you're solid in your love. Even the best marriages have their moments of worry. What if you said something the wrong way, pushed a little too hard?

You may be sitting here reading this, and you may wonder what I'm getting at (ha ha, as if I really know!). This young couple I'm talking about, they're undergoing a test of their love. And they've tested, threatening in ways that no one should ever have to test (theres that word again). And not because they don't love eachother. They do. Not because they're young. I challenge that its because those of us who know what love is don't take the responsibility to teach those younger than us HOW to love. Its not just a parents job. Anyone can model this, anyone can show someone else how to love, and how even to fight lovingly. We can impart to anyone the things we know. And we don't.

We instead sit idly by and we watch. We see them begin the patterns that are destructive to them, and we know they're destructive. But its not our place, so we say nothing until its too late. Until they're stuck so far into the rut they're in, its inevitable. We give them ways to scurry out of it, to run and escape instead of handing them resources to build it back up. What would you do, when you're faced with someone you love, whom you've watched get to this point of love themselves?

Watching this couple, I have had to consider what I think love is and the way real life allows it to manifest.

We are told: love should be easy. Love should just happen. Love should be romantic and sweet. Love shouldn't say harsh words. Love shouldn't get angry. Love shouldn't have to be tested.

That's not true in the slightest. Love is never ever easy. Love is full of differences, and unknowns and perspectives and people. Love is full of emotion, raw and hungry and lonely. Love is more than hard work. Love takes commitment and passion and fire and intensity. Love is exhausting, trying, it gets pissed off ... sometimes it even gets pissed on. And love definitely requires tests. Its too fragile not to. But love is also beautiful. Its the complexities, the hope and the chaos of it that makes it worthwhile.

Why doesn't anyone tell anyone this? Is the truth not the sugar coated pretty picture we're so desperately hoping for? We read books, watch movies of "love" and we're mesmerized. We want that. We get mad when the love we have isn't what we want, what we've been told we should have. When it isn't just the right way. We even tell our friends to get out of things that aren't quite so perfect, just because they're unhappy for a moment. We turn our heads from those who cheat because their partner couldn't "give them what they needed".

What about being true human beings, true friends and giving others what they need? The skills to love authentically, the support to do so, and resources to try to keep love intact? Then maybe the tests can be healthy, and won't leave someones life in jeopardy because of the turbulent emotions that surround it.

How can we tell someone that that isn't what love is, if that's the love their living? If love looks like that to them, who are we to say otherwise? It may not be our love, our perspective, but it doesn't make it any less real, and it doesn't make it any less deserving of respect. And isn't love - in any of its forms, faces, and colors - worth fighting for?

I would hope that by understanding the perspectives of love, I can at least better help that couple learn to test their love in a way that doesn't test their life.

Sadly, I know this feeling happens far too often, for too many. Not even just the young ones, but those who are my age, and those who are older. It is the nature of what love does to us. Real love robs the sense of sensibility, it robs us of sound judgement, and we just do. Because honestly ... we should.

This couple is lucky enough to have people around them who care, who share and who listen and want them to succeed. I worry though, for those who don't.

The next time a friend comes to you with a story of how wrong their love is making them feel, try to understand how it was love to them to begin with ... and then give them a tool to find that love again. Don't be so quick to feed them the shoulds ... and try to find out the does.

Life is messy ... and love is chaos. But at least it doesn't do it alone.