“A Many-splendored Thing”

An infatuation may be a grand passion that is all-absorbing, dramatic, and insistent. True love may have elements of this kind of intensity, but it knows other moods too. The kind of love that lasts satisfies many emotional needs in both the partners. It can be tender and sweet and protective. It can be casual and comradely. It can be inspiring and uplifting. It can be relaxed, with a comfortable sense of at-home-ness with each other. To last, love must indeed be a many-splendored thing.

Not Really Blind

Love is blind, so the old adage goes. It is true that those who are deeply in love, as well as those who are madly infatuated, tend to idealize each other. They see only perfection in one another. They are blind to the human frailties, the foibles and follies, that are common to all men and women. But the love that lasts through the years has enough realism to protect the partners from being too grossly disillusioned about each other. They see one another and themselves clearly enough so that further acquaintance is a pleasant adventure rather than a painful discovery.

This may be the reason why lasting love is usually based upon full acquaintance. The two people grow more and more fond of each other as time goes on. They grow into love rather than just fall into it. They find each other lovable through actual experience and not just in fantasies. They have a love that is based upon reality, and it lasts precisely because it is real.

A Change for the Better

A young lover may protest that his love will never change. But if it is to last it will have to change and grow with time. As two persons develop and share new roles and tasks in life, their relationship with each other must shift to fit new situations. This doesn’t mean that married people are any less in love than they were during their courtship days. There are few couples who could stand the strain of consuming passion day after day. But there are many who live out a full lifetime of quiet, loving devotion to each other in their common life together.

Two people at the altar quite probably love each other differently than they did when they first met, or than they will after the honeymoon is over, or the first baby has come, or the first family crisis is past, or when they share their later years together. If their love lasts, it must be as flexible as they are, to stretch up and out as they do to encompass more and more of life.

SUMMING UP

Dating is a proving ground for love. Loves arrive and are given a whirl on the dating merry-go-round that is common during the teen and young adult years. Most of these loves will last only a short while. Each new special friend, each new relationship, each new feeling, helps the person gain experience in the wonders of human interaction and insight into himself. As loves come and go, the emotional repertoire of the individual is developed to the point where he or she is increasingly capable of loving widely and deeply in the many ways that are important for fulfillment.

Loving and being loved is terribly important for the welfare of any person. It is necessary for a sense of well-being. Without it a person is lonely, cold, cut off from others. With love, there comes a feeling of relatedness with the whole world.

Learning to love and to be loved is not all pleasant or painless. Some experiences during the teen years are difficult, but none need be disastrous. There probably will be heartache in the lives of most young people—as there always has been. But fortunately, the heart does not break; it merely opens a bit wider for each new experience.

Falling in and out of love is to be expected as part of dating experience. It can be maturing as it is assimilated by any young person who wants to grow through it.