Is It All Just Semantics?

I read a lot of advice columns, mostly for their entertainment value. Sometimes, a column seems to apply to something in my own situation, and I read it with a slightly hairy eyeball. I think it's somewhat funny when the columnist airly suggests that her writer break up with a boyfriend of many years' duration... do people just DO that on the whim of a total stranger? I'd never have done that with my own relationships. Actually, I ended most of them, but it wasn't until every single chance was exhausted for us to find peace together.

Anyway, this idea of ending relationships got me thinking about the relationships that are ending around me, and the idea of "choosing to stay in love" to which I alluded in the previous post.

Here are the top ten things I believe about intimate love:

1. Intimate love is inviolate. Nobody may tresspass against it. It is sacrosant. Both people in the relationship must believe this truth with their entire beings.

2. Intimate love is sustainable.

3. For intimate love to sustain, both people must come together in attraction that includes but goes beyond the physical. In other words, the relationship is made of whole cloth, and both partners "keep the cloth clean" by pursuing individual interests and taking care of their bodies and souls. As each person is grateful for the other's love, he or she does what he or she can to stay interesting and attractive out of respect for the other.

4. Intimate love is sacrificing. It prioritizes neither partner, but instead puts the welfare of the couple ahead of either person's individual agenda.

5. Intimate love involves trust that the partners share goals and values. This is a hard one, becuase sometimes people misrepresent their goals and values, or they're quite honestly not sure what their goals and values are. But if two people are throwing in their futures together, it's necessary for their vision of the future be similar, if not the same.

6. Intimate love is forgiving. This means that each person must "assume the best" when the other person does something thoughtless to violate mutual goodwill. The person who offends must be able to see the situation through his or her partner's eyes, own up to it, and ask for forgiveness. To do so indicates trust in the partner. If a partner is constantly offended, however, there may need to be another conversation about values (see number 5). Hopefully, people work that stuff out when they're still dating.

7. Intimate love is REALLY forgiving. While abuse, adultery, and addiction are situations where a person's physical or material safety is comporomised to the point of dissolving the relationship, intimate love strives for understanding and invests the time and work required to recognfigure the status quo so that the couple can emerge stronger than they were previously. This effort may take more strength than either person or the couple together can bear, but when it's possible, it's possible.

8. Intimate love is accepting that there are going to be times when love is the LAST feeling between the two people, but it knows in the background that the love is still there, if on ice.

9. Intimate love is behavior. It's the solicitous protection and support of another person and the right to expect solicitous protection from that person in turn. Each person is steadfastly in the other person's corner.

10. Intimate love is free. It holds no accounts. It allows both people to be who they are, without artifice or based on a desire to please. Thus, when two people come together in love, and they find they fit together being who they really are, it's a joy for them and the others who are around them.

Okay, writing this list nullifies the point I was going to make about my friend who chooses to stay in love with her husband... as I was going to say that can't we choose to love ANYONE?

I don't think we can, no.