true lasting love

[johncomic]

If we're talking about the deepest and most serious kind of loving relationships -- namely, long-term ones, ones that are intended to last a lifetime -- then one of the most crucial elements of this love is also one of the most quiet, mundane and “boring”: companionship.

To me, this means a simple pleasure derived purely from someone else's company. If you will allow me to pick on Sharon and myself as a handy example for a sec: I want to spend at least some time with her every day. I can easily go a day without seeing her if I need to, without undue hardship. But given the choice, I would choose her company. Not constantly 24/7 -- I can't stand 24/7 with anybody, I need my space! -- , but at least for a while every day.

A companion can share the humdrum details of their daily life with you and you are genuinely interested. Not necessarily raptly fascinated, but you enjoy hearing about things most people wouldn't care about. And they listen to your “what little things happened to you today” with the same gentle but genuine interest.

It's the simple fact that the two of you are a team: the kind of team that can work together to build a life. Just by enjoying being on the same team, you can transcend things like differing interests or differences of opinion. You just plain want to be together regularly.

This is not like the first flush of romance, where you want to be together constantly for the passion. This is where the togetherness (again, not constant relentless, just regular and recurring) is its own reward.

Granted, if you throw in shared values and shared interests, you can make the basis of this relationship that much stronger. If there is mutual passion, even better. But the bottom line is that the successful long-term relationship needs you to be deep friends.

I think this sort of simple, quiet companionate love may be the only kind that endures and grows stronger over time. This is the sort of person you can build a life with. This is the sort of love you marry for.

So I find it kinda surprising how much our popular culture -- and our wider social culture -- ignore it completely. No one ever advises you to look for something like this in a potential mate. No one even tells you how to recognize it when you find it. It's like society seems to have no idea what a long-term love is actually about. This may be why enduring happy relationships and marriages can seem almost accidental?

Looking back from this perspective, I can see that there are many women I have loved -- and told I've loved -- whom I did not love in this way. (I was even engaged to one.) Just because you feel what society tells us is “love”, doesn't mean you have the makings of a good marriage. So if you want to call marriageable love “real” love, then I guess I didn't really love them.

Reaching this realization is an immense step for me.

Sure, I recognize that not all love is necessarily like this Big kind, and maybe other kinds are “just as real” in their own way. But I spent a long time confusing Romance and Relationships, thinking I had both because I had the first. I realize now it's a good thing I didn't marry any of those others, for their sakes as well as my own!

I recognize now that true lasting love is rare, and at its heart pretty unspectacular and simple.