sometimes love aint enough

A song that was a hit in the late 1990’s had a line that I loved: “ Baby sometimes love aint enough.” That line summed up so much, some of what many people venturing in relationships forget. When the gooey feeling is all over you and your eyes light up at her sight, when your every waking moment is filled with his thoughts and the mere mention of his name gives you palpitations, then it is easy to think you got it all worked out. Because you love each other, all mountains will be climbed, all hills levelled, yeah?

A big mistake we often make. The cases we have seen or heard of people who truly and genuinely love each other, yet can’t stop fighting or hurting each other, are many. Same case as people who believe they love each other but who will swear they will never get married to each other because there is no way they could survive with each other. The point- there is more that makes a marriage or relationship work than just deep hormone-instilled affection.

The problem would then have to do with love itself or our definition of it. However, since essentially there is nothing wrong with love in itself (I am actually a firm believer in the Biblical verse that says that love conquers all), the problem has to do with how we define what love is in our contemporary culture.

Various philosophers, writers and psychologists have defined different forms of love. There is eros, the romantic, sexual love; philia, the love of companionship and friendship; agape, the self giving love that goes on giving even when the other becomes unlovable, often paralleled to the unconditional love of God.

The problem that many people make is depending on the romantic attraction they have for their partner to determine the direction of a relationship. Romance is simply about feelings- how I see you and how that makes me react. Such feelings in themselves depend on our perceptions and circumstances and are very fickle. They are the ones that will initially bring you together but they will never form the basis for building a strong and meaningful relationship since we cannot always influence how others perceive us, or the circumstances under which they do that. Such a love gives rise to such statements as: “I no longer love him,” “I do not feel the same way about him anymore,” or “ I am in love with another woman.” Love did not die. The feelings died. The feeling of “being in love” evaporated because something that had prompted it changed.

In order for your love to last longer, beyond the dry patches when she is no longer as beautiful as you once saw her, or when even the financial charm you saw in him has been soured by his temper, then all three types of love need to intentionally co-exist. You have to work at actively incorporating all three in your relationship.

Bursting the myths we carry around about attraction and love, Dean Sherman, author of Love, Sex and Relationships points out that romantic love is usually single in focus and under the control of the participant. “ Have you ever noticed that you are not romantically attracted to five people at the same time? Sometimes you might be attracted to a couple of people for a very short time but the tussle in your heart doesn’t last long and one person emerges as the one you are interested in,” he writes.
The fact that romantic attraction is under the control of the participant means that attractions are not beyond our control. As he writes, “ You do not have to be in love with anybody. This notion that love is something that hits us is a lie.”
Sherman though adds that the romantic attraction is directed, not initiated, by our will. What we have to do is decide whether or not to pursue the object of our affection.

The flip side of that is that we do not have to fall out of love. Sherman insists that love is not an “it” that we fall into and which can leave us any time. “There are times in most romantic relationships when we will have to remind ourselves to stay in love with the person we have chosen. Feelings come and go. Sometimes we can feel head over heels about our spouse, and other times everything seems dull. But if we stay committed through the dull times, the feelings of love return,” he writes.

Such is the time that philia and agape love play the biggest role in holding the relationship intact. Phileo love is about friendship and partnering. It is the thing that you see in another person that draws you to be their friend. But even this can fade as it depends on characteristics we like in our partners, which bind us together. Agape and philia flourish the eros.

Agape love comes out as most key kind of loving you will ever give your partner, primarily because you will love them even when they do not deserve it. This love will not give ultimatums and conditions because it is generated by a greater cause, that of wanting the best for the other person no matter the personal cost. This kind of love does not just happen. You make it happen. Loving becomes a personal act commitment, of being sympathetic and thoughtful, of giving with no thought of receiving. The difficult part is that agape loving is not easy and goes against the whole grain of our essence. Human beings by their very nature are selfish. It takes another strength to put another human being’s needs and happiness above your own. That is not to say it cannot be done. In fact that is the only hope you have for a lasting, meaningful relationship and marriage.

Bagging the elusive man

‘If men are like buses, then how do I catch one?’ That is the title of a book by Michelle Hamon that illustrates how elusive bagging an eligible man has become for so many of the modern day women. The problem is not in that there are no men around- but that today’s man for one reason or another, is in no hurry to think of wedding bells.

Maybe it comes with seasonal tides like the migration of birds but when the settling bug bites, woe unto the single woman who has to attend so many weddings while trying to explain to a myriad aunties why she has not said anything concerning her own. The problem per se is not getting a man because local statistics tell us that though women outnumber men, there are still enough single and eligible men around. Crisis is when a woman reaches that point in life when only wedding bells will do, and she slowly and sadly realizes that she might have to tone down on so much of what she wanted in her perfect man, and even the compromised ‘revised second edition’ might not be all that easy to convince to produce the magical stone.

When the woman finally decides to try some ingenuity on her own to convince the poor bloke that it was time anyway he preserved some of those gorgeous genes in a stable family setting, she comes across some code, that no one has ever bothered articulating its specifics (at least to me). This is the code that has cost so many men and women possible spouses and friendships because someone somewhere went to the trouble of laying down rules for love.

If you ever watched the movie  ‘Two can play that game’, starring Vivica Fox and Morris Chestnut, then you probably came up with the same lesson that I did: that there are no rules to love. But how I so wish that could sink into the skulls of so many, who go about with bleeding hearts, probably because they did not say (or do) want they wanted to say when they should have said it, and now they just wonder at what might have been.

For all the aggressive women who have sat by the phone waiting for it to ring only to resign themselves to the fact that he is not calling- at least not tonight; for all the women who have won his engagement ring for what- four years and he is still to talk about weddings; for all those who have not yet gone beyond knowing his first name, and even that, he did not tell it to you himself, you got it from a friend: when it comes to matters of the heart, there is no script that will work every time. And even when you think you got it, ‘the foolproof recipe for making him walk down the aisle’, the man will always do something that upsets the whole scheme and you want to shout, “It is not meant to be that way.”

I do not dispute that there are the generalisations that work with men: they are the hunters, being chased by a woman spoils the fun of the game… blah blah. The truth is, you are not going to lose him if you never had him, so get him first. And that might mean walking up to him and finding out his name. Or you just might be the one to pop the million-shilling question. Or you have to get off your bum and fix that first date after all.

When it comes to matters of the heart, and here we are not talking about the blood pumping muscle in your thoracic cavity that misses a few beats or races when you see him/her, virtual codes that often exist in people’s minds may only succeed in causing you so much heartbreak. There will always be a battle between logic/sense/ conventions and what you think you heart wants. You will often have to decide between following your heart and using your head. That does not mean you throw all reason to the wind just because his sight preempts everything else that was running in your brain and three months later you are either HIV positive, with a broken heart or wondering what the heck to do with that baby.

May be loving someone is all in the mind and therefore a matter of choice rather than the combined effects of genetic self-preservation, cupid, hormones and emotional imbalances. And may be the fall is so bad it short circuits the brain’s thinking path or moves the grey matter to some other part of the human anatomy. But maybe that is how it is meant to be. Uncharted, unprecedented, unwritten. The only thing a list of do’s and don’ts could ever accomplish is wreak havoc in hearts that are completely taken over by temporary madness.

I wont try and draw parallels between men and buses especially Kenyan buses- but I guess Michelle, catching a man is much more complicated than catching a bus, unless you are ready to flaunt the rules and get in the arena ready to play dirty.

In Search of the Perfect Mate

Women love shopping. OK. Most women thrive on shopping, and why not? Even experts say it is therapeutic. To perfect the art, women biblically follow the adage, “if it doesn’t fit, don’t buy”, some advice that has saved them ending up with pieces they cannot wear a month later. The difficult part comes when the same wisdom is applied to their search for partners, resulting in tragic results and conclusions- women are impossible to please.

So impossible that an Internet joke has been spurned about it. It is about a store that has husbands for sale. The store has six floors and the attributes of the men increase as a shopper ascends the flights. There is a catch though- a shopper can only go up or exit the building on whatever floor he/she is on. By the time the shopper is on the fifth floor, the deal is already too good. The men there have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak. One particular shopper goes on to the sixth floor and there finds a sign that reads: Floor 6 – You are visitor 4,363,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store. Watch your step as you exit the building, and have a nice day!

If such a store ever existed, then the number of those visiting floor six can only go one way- up. Forget women’s fascination with the bad-boy-cum-jerk phenomenon. Deep inside, all women are longing for that man who will treat them like the queens they believe they are, and any man who even comes close to such a description will find himself in very high demand. And I can guess the female variation of that joke- the women here have no kids, earn less than you… what were the other characteristics Info-track Research and Harris Interactive came up with?

But do perfect men exist? No, do perfect partners exist- you know- those from Adam’s rib bone allegory, that if you miss them once, you have missed on destiny? And is that partnerhood mutual in the sense that your Mr/Mrs Right will think the same of you?
It is normal to have ideals of the kind of partners we think we need. Women in particular go through their search for lifetime partners armed with a shopping list of ‘have to’ and ‘absolutely not’ characteristics. Tall, dark, handsome… Anyone who does not even come close to that is promptly checked off the list. Some, amidst the rubble, unearth their gem. But many will testify to having kissed enough frogs hoping that hidden beneath was the prince who would match them to the sunset, only to discover that WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) is not just for desktop publishing.

We will not all be lucky to find the partner who maps our childhood mental beau. Even probability can prove that. A certain self appointed statistician went to the trouble of explaining why he will never meet his proverbial girl. I will not try to explain or understand the standard deviation principles and statistics theories used to come up with the results (I skipped STA 110 classes), but he concluded that as a 21 year old from North America; looking for a beautiful female aged 18-25, with a wee bit of intelligence (not so much to ask for), it would take him 3493 weeks (that’s nearly 67 years) of daily blind dates before he met one of the 18726 probables in the entire world. Taking into consideration our life expectancy, he would be dead (and her too) before he found her.
After all that, do you still need more evidence why you should just learn to live with his small misdemeanors and hope he will style up under your tutelage? Or why you should just learn to embrace her 40”+ waistline and her nagging and meanwhile get a life insurance?

So what is so wrong with settling for nothing but the best? Assuming the “till death do us part” vows are for real, it is only fair to have in mind what you really want. And even professionally we know only specific goals work.
We cannot begrudge anyone who feels shortchanged on what they got at the end of their wedding night, or whatever variation we have made of that. We can even try and understand their plight as they search of the perfect man/woman, only too discover that they will never come with all the trappings you need them to and even when they do, the packaging is often all so wrong you may fail to recognise them. It is only those who have the patience to scour beneath the mismatched clothes, nose-mining fingers, crazy weave, shallow laughter, loud belching (and snoring), funny accent and body odour problem, who may brandish their had earned trophy of frog-turned prince/ess.

I am not trying to discourage all those who are armed with a fantasy list of the man who will keep them warm in old age (if it lasts that long).
The sad fact at the end of the day is that perfect partners never existed and if they did, they went extinct a number of millennia ago. Ditching a list though does not mean giving up any standards and facing life with an empty slate and open mind. It rather means being open to the mysterious, unpredictable nature of love and gauging how we rate as partners before we can rate others.

For even when you think you found him/her, you will find that they come more in raw material form, and it is only hard work and persistent belief and faith in them that will give you what you have been searching for. Perfection does not create a perfect bond, love does. And the fun is not in getting there, it is in the journey of growth and transformation for the two of you.