Loving Vs. Being In Love
“We shall always be in love. We will continue to keep our love alive the same way it is now,” said a nice young lady in the front row of a recent pre-marriage workshop. Her fiancé sitting beside her smiled contentedly. I though of her comment when I read an article copied in our local paper from the Albany Times Union.
The article focused on finding out that one partner in a relationship that “the one you trusted with your heart and your soul is no longer in love with you.” This according to Kristi L. Gustafson is the ultimate betrayal. She quoted two different authors who have written books about this tragedy of our lover “loving us” but not being “in love” with us.
She presents it is a heartbreaking scene, but it doesn’t seem like a problem to me. It is the natural course of life and relationships. I didn’t confront the young woman in the workshop with the reality because life would teach her if she was at all open. The point is that in a relationship we go from being in love with all that incredible chemistry to loving our partner. That is the natural course of life. Always one partner reaches that place faster than the other. That too is life.
In other words we go from projecting (You are the only perfect person in the world), on each other all the answers to life to simply loving someone. That is what people have been doing since we began the human race. It is the right thing to happen. Perhaps we will take off our rose colored glasses and begin to see the other person realistically and still love them. It seems to me that is the key to a lasting relationship.