Men, Love, Women

The year is 2019, the amazing 21^st century and it seems like people have already given up on love.

Are people really giving up on love?

A few years ago a close female friend said to me, “Tochi, all men are scum. Love is overrated. Find the one that can take care of you and get married to him. Because he will cheat on you every time and the least you can do is cry in a limo”

That statement over there is very misleading and it is a pity that most people believe it. Women think the men are out to hurt them and shouldn’t be trusted while the men think the women should not be trusted either. Everyone now wears a shield, protecting himself/herself from what is only a fear. Even the teenagers have learnt to stay ‘woke’.

I am not a hopeless romantic, not even a typical relationship kind of person but I do believe in love. I believe men and women are same when it comes to love. We are all likely to love and to betray love. Men are scum and so are the women. Men are angels and so are the women.  I believe both men and women are capable of genuinely being in love and both gender are capable of keeping a healthy relationship.

Two nights ago I invited 16 friends for a sleep over, to discuss men, love and women. Truths were exposed after a few bottles of beer and glasses of wine. You know they said drunken men do not lie.

4 men and 7 women from the group  believed love was real and possible but unattainable in its real form. 5 of the men thought love was just an illusion and a manipulation. Well, I thought that was fair enough. At least there's hope.

We talked about their past relationships, present relationships, childhood and family values. From what they said I realized that we are all walking about with emotional baggage and because we are either too angry or too scared to show it, we hide under the umbrella of ‘being smart’.

We become suspects to each other. The man suspects the woman is with him because of his money so he has to be smart, nobody wants to be played. The woman suspects the man only wants her for the sex and will leave her some day for someone else so she must beat him to the game. Love became a game and we became puppets to each other. The man is glorified for his conquests and poked fun at when beaten. The scorned woman rallies her sisters to stand up against the men and to take over the ship. The young folks hear it, read about it. They raise their fists to shield and ready to fight. Nobody wants to be in love anymore, we fear love and destroy it before it even begins. We convince ourselves that holding the knife would hurt less. Seriously, how did we get here?

I think the problem is that we expect so much from love. We actually expect a whole lot from the innocent thing. First we meet someone and think forever immediately, instead of really getting to know the person without having any expectations. Not expectations of what we want in a partner but expectations of a happy ending. When you jump in too soon you are most likely to jump out too fast.

We expect someone to love us completely when we have not even loved ourselves. We say we love someone else when we have not loved ourselves enough. How can you offer someone a shirt when you are naked yourself?

We look for selective selfish love. We want our partner to be okay with something that we wouldn’t be okay with if they did it. We say “true love is someone who accepts your past, supports your present and encourages your future”, “don’t change for someone to love you, the right person will love the real you”. Yes, but not when you have toxic characters with zero plans for adjustments. True love is not blind, neither is it stupid. When you know your actions would hurt someone and you still do them, it is not love.

We enter into relationships feeling vulnerable and empty and just want our self-esteem needs met. We know a lot about what we do not want in a relationship but have no idea about what we want.

We are more concerned about the benefits of a relationship than in preserving the relationship. We expect to be made happy in the relationship. This makes us insensitive and inconsiderate, which will make us to use manipulating means to focus on our own needs.

We think too much and create problem that wasn’t even there in the first place, always on the lookout for evidence to show the wrongness of our partner.

When things do not work out the way we planned it in our head, we will twist our emotions and memories to make us believe that the love we felt for so long was more of an illusion. A relationship is just like a stick, when we pick one end of the stick we also pick the other. There are times when our choices bring consequences we would rather live without. Those choices are called mistakes. We could be the mistake, the person could be the mistake, our actions and reactions while in the relationship could be the mistake but that doesn’t mean what we felt wasn’t love. Love is not perfect, sometimes we win and other times we lose.

So it is okay when we make those mistakes, it is okay because it is a part of life. It is a learning experience. We acknowledge the mistake, correct it and learn from it. We may have had to give up on the relationship with the person but we must not give up on love.  We can still find it again. We can’t be afraid to start over. We will take a chance to build something better the next time.

Love is something we do; it is the giving of self. It is not a validation, it is the sacrifice we make and it needs to be fed daily. Love is all around us and we can experience it in its purest form. Even if it was only for a short while, whenever we meet it we must bare our hearts and enjoy it to the fullest because it is a very wonderful experience. It doesn’t matter what happens after. Just enjoy the moments of silliness and unguarded behaviors. The world is too sad already, you do not want to miss out on any happy moment- please give the shield back to captain America.

Good luck!