Real Love example essay topic

hat is love? In spite of all that science and religion have told us, people do not want to understand the true nature of the most potent force in the world. They believe in the Hollywood myth -- - physical beauty and poetic passion, two hearts in stardust beating as one; the chase, the capture and the surrender. All that may well be a thrilling part of attraction and courtship; but it is not and never can be love. Love and a physical embrace become almost synonymous in young minds; both create ecstasy. But few young people are taught the possibilities of and need for growth beyond that beautiful excitement.

There will be less disillusion and heartache in marriage when we begin to understand that from the illusions of romance a deep and abiding love may emerge. Love is the passionate and abiding desire on the part of two or more people to produce together conditions under which each can be, and spontaneously express, his real self: to produce together an intellectual soil and an emotional climate in which each can flourish, for superior to what either could achieve alone. In a true marriage, man and woman think more of the partnership than they do of themselves. It is an interweaving of interest's and a facing of sacrifice together for the sake of both. It's feeling of security and contentment comes from mutual efforts. In marriage, as in dancing, the happiness does not stem from the way the individual moves, but in the togetherness of the behavior.

The more completely one can express his real self to another person the more deeply he can love. This means that a man can speak honestly to his wife, letting her know what is actually in his mind, without fear of misunderstanding or any form of reprisal. If a man can say, without trepidation: "My dear, I can forgive your mother, but I can never forget how she stood in the doorway saying those awful things to me"-he may be spontaneously expressing himself. He may decide not to say anything of the kind, in order to spare his wife unhappiness. But if he refrains because he is afraid that she will misunderstand him and take revenge, these two people are not producing together the intellectual and emotional climate in which each can be his real self.

There are many false emotions that may lead us into unhappy marriages. For instance: sexual desire aroused by physical beauty or perhaps sheer energy. That is why we need to know the difference between physical attraction and deep affection. Another false emotion is the need of living life vicariously through another person because of inability to be one's self. It may be that the wife was the daughter of a poorly paid minister; hence, she goads her husband on to make more money and so to be like the man she wanted her father to be. Other misleading emotions include the compulsive desire to feel needed; a man's wish for a woman to mother him; a woman's determination not to be an old maid.

We may think we are in love because of the way another person makes us feel, but love is not delight in ME, love is self-realization together in us. Two mutually infatuated people can want each other desperately, without love, and without sensing the emotional insincerity, which consumes them. Neither perceives he is experiencing little more than a cheap reassurance. What seems to be love is but blind delight in being treated as if one were perfection itself. Self-realization together includes the right of each partner to pursue individual interests. It often takes five years for a young couple to discover that "we do everything together" is sentimentality and not love.

Among such couples, if the man likes fishing and the woman does not, they give up fishing. If she likes concerts and he does not, they give up music. Their activities are confined to what both enjoy; in a constricted life " they do everything together" because they fear that individual activity may cause them to drift apart. By yielding to this fear they narrow their lives, invite boredom and may soon be drifting apart-doing even that "together". Sooner or later the reassurance of complete agreement is gone. Troubled faces confront each other across the breakfast table.

By dinnertime they may be angry faces, divided as only emotional distance can divide. Quiet desperation is followed by panic. But two people really in love are not too concerned over disagreement, knowing that mere differences of opinion are not the same thing as loss of emotional unity. True love is not so blind!

It sees faults as well as virtues, unhesitatingly accepting the fact that no one is perfect. Love says, and with honest feeling, "I know that I shall be irked by your inability ever to be on time. I know that you will be irritated by my smoking. I know that differences in our energy and tempo will annoy both of us until we learn how to work them out together. But, despite thee difficulties, we see so much of value in each other that we surely can create together a life far superior to what either of us could achieve alone. What matters is that we each sense and like the kind of person the other is, and want to cherish him for what he really is".

No two human beings can possibly live together in the most intimate emotional relationship known without sometimes frustrating each other. Understanding is needed because where love is blocked it turns to anger and hate. To think that there are no things to be given up for each other is to suppose that love costs nothing. Love is self-discovery and self-fulfillment through healthy growth with and for the other person. Real love will grow as the years go by. The very experience of loving will lead to the discovery of how to love better.

The only thing in the world as strong as love is truth, and there are reasons for believing that as far as marriage is concerned they are different aspects of the same thing. A deep and abiding love is the emotional response to an intellectual recognition of the truth about another person. Love's development, like that of a tree, is not a steady process but an irregular one. The art of love is patience till the spring returns. But what we have really loved can never be lost. Its influence on our personality is always with us, and perhaps even death does not take it away. --.