As a 17-year-old girl, I admit that I am not most experienced in Love. I’ve experienced love for convenience, friendship disguised cunningly as love, and recently I believe I have experienced True Love: the sort of feeling that, although you realise that a relationship doesn’t have to last forever to be special, you still want it to last forever. This is rare, especially for someone as cautious and literal minded as I am who usually views things as lasting for ALAP (As Long As Possible), rather then the dreaded word ‘forever’. I can honestly say I am not an expert, however, as I have only felt this way for a couple of months, and therefore still have the cautious view that this is again friendship in disguised (but with 99% accuracy I can say this isn’t true).
What I’m getting at is that each feeling I have is new, and as a tourist to this new emotion I find things which are interesting. The point this time that I found was about the image of what we fall in love with.
The trail of thought began with a standard moment of insecurity which everyone makes, spoken aloud by my boyfriend. I think it was about weight – after all, it usually is, even with the slimmest of people – and my response was a typical cliché line ‘you look fine the way you are. You shouldn’t lose or gain a pound,’ and I’m not the sort to lie. I did, and genuinely still do, think that he is the perfect weight and build.
Then I realised that clearly it wasn’t going to be a very honest opinion. Everything about him I began to realise was under the rose-tinted spectacles, and I only realised this when, almost desperately, I had to keep a hold of the image I had of him the moment that I fell in love.
Is this just a single incident, or is it really the same for every relationship, and possibly the secret towards failing and succeeding relationships? If every time someone fell in love they fell in love with the exact, complete form that they saw their lover as, then a lot of things would be explained.
Firstly, the failure of young love: In our earliest years, we develop more then throughout the rest of our lives, and if we fall in love with someone while they are growing older, then they are obviously going to change. This image isn’t just physical appearance; it is merely how we perceive the other half, which is largely personality. As someone we are interested in changes, we begin to sub-consciously lose interest, even if they become more beautiful and well-rounded people.
But then why do some young loves last, I hear you ask? Well, the key is to fall in love over and over again. If there is a way to actually do this purposefully, then I would like to know. As far as I know, there is no way, and the ability to do so is purely accidental and unrelated to the strength of the love or the characters falling in love.
Another example of the use of this theory is why the rate of divorce and bad relationships is on the increase. Blame the sanctity of marriage being destroyed, morality being corrupted or the general state of the world, if you wish, but the fact of the matter is that many couples who find themselves making the pledge to stay together forever and genuinely mean it find themselves mistaken, where many more may have stayed together only a few years earlier. But our world is changing constantly at a faster rate then ever before, especially the people. Our views, appearance, and even personality can be manipulated in a moment.
There are exceptions to the rule. There are many couples who break up for reasons other than this. People can sometimes change the image in their mind to one that is either more or less realistic to the actual partner over time. A lack of communication is a main cause of the image blurring and seemingly less attainable.
And the couples who manage to brave it all to last forever? Well, there are either two explanations: Either they continue to fall in love again and again, or the more likely option that their original image was either vague or based on something that never changes, such as an aspect of their personality, a sense of humour or even just that certain smile.
Does this theory always hold, or is this just co-incidence? Either way, I don’t think I’ll be risking an extreme make-over anytime soon…
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