How often have you heard people talk about looking for love and finding love? Those terms make it sound as if love is something you stumble over, full blown like a rose and ready to take home. In reality, love is not quite so simple. It is not something you find hidden in a corner or tucked away in your purse like a surprise five dollar bill. Rather, it is something you build, brick by brick and gesture by gesture.
If that makes love sound like hard work, you’re right – but it’s also joyous work. And it is no different now in the digital media age than it was in the days when your best chance at finding someone to love was asking your sister’s best friend to hook you up with her cousin. You still find someone to love by making connections, and you still build love one interaction at a time.
The biggest difference between love BC (before computers) and love today is that the range for finding a person with whom you can connect is much broader. The Internet has opened whole new worlds, and not just for ecommerce. Your own backyard now extends around the world, and you can easily “meet” someone who lives not just in a different time zone but in an entirely different day than you do. Social media has brought the whole world closer together – but it hasn’t made it any easier to connect with that special someone, nor to build a life and a lasting love with that person once you’ve connected.
So what exactly does it take to build a lasting love in a world where the next relationship is just an IM away, and ending a relationship is as easy as changing your Facebook status and blocking a screen name on your IM?
It takes the same things it has always taken, the same things that turned arranged marriages into solid, lasting, lifelong relationships: respect, trust, faith and honesty. It takes living each day together and working with your partner to create the life the two of you want to live. It means opening yourself up to intimacy and sharing your dreams, hopes and fears with that one special person. It means allowing that one special person into your life to collaborate with you, listening to their dreams and hopes and fears, and allowing them to influence and shape your dreams.
Are you still hoping to stumble across your true love and live happily ever after? As long as you expect to just find love, it will continue to elude you. If you truly want love that lasts a lifetime, you’ll need to change the way you think about relationships and prepare yourself to build a solid and lasting partnership based on trust, faith, honesty and respect.
No comments:
Post a Comment