languages of love unpublished

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Survey Says

Or

Constant Stranger

February holidays come in all shapes and sizes. Groundhog Day, Super Bowl and of course Valentine’s Day. Punxsutawney Phil and those fine young warriors in tight suits and protective gear will dominate the first part of the month. Valentine’s hits on the ides of February and with it our version and vision of the languages of love. Who am I to set down this info? Me. The guy that’s loved not always wisely or well and compounded his experiences with twenty-twenty hindsight and an incredible sense of love’s illusions that he recalls. One might say… from both sides.

  Does love have its own languages?  Survey says: yes, and pundits may mention that the premiere language of real love is consideration and honesty. Consideration implies that you work to shield your lover from any (especially your) unpleasantries since you’ll want to do everything, anything to keep your lover sane and happy. It goes without saying that, as honesty should be the only policy, you’ll always be truthful. This is not as easy as it might sound. What you profess as truth at times can get delivered half-baked and become misinterpreted. And besides, who knows how much truth is truth-fully?

Now, I don’t mean to kick kitty litter into your cornflakes, but just because you’re providing eachother with havens of warmth and safety-- as lofty as that might sound—there is no guarantee that you’ll not one day wake up next to Mr. Edward Hyde and not Dr. Henry Jekyll. Is it possible to have a union that has it’s foundations in not accepting or revealing each other’s true natures? Survey says: it happens every day. The glimpses that you might glean by spending as much time together as is possible and comfortable for you both may help, but for a relationship to really work I’ve found that a degree of ambiguity-- not assuming you know the other person completely-- comes in handy when you find yourself in a ‘where the *#!%^&!* did that come from (?)’ moment.  Is it possible to fall in love with someone that you’ll never fully understand? Survey says: you can take that one to the bank.

It’s not implausible that a person cannot be a person and not love or have loved others, ergo, couples-- as a matter of courtesy-- avoid talking about other very personal experiences; however, past loves live inside ourselves forever, for good or ill. And future loves? Well…best NOT to consider them. Appreciate: no matter how well you think you know yourself-- how to please and to what degree your true feelings may be shared-- the fact is that there are apples and oranges (strangers) here; not only do you not ever fully know yourself; but, the other person, that you think you know, may not be who you think they are. Not surprisingly, they can change without your knowledge, warning or consent. Is it really important to remember that you are both unfinished bipeds and as such need time and room to grow? Yes. And it’s not out of the question that even after a time; one person may need more independence than the other wants them to have. It’s effortless to become attached to the person that you love and it’s also easy for each of us to find an attraction somewhere else. If someone limits themselves on the inside for the sake of appearances on the outside they’re surrendering their rights as a unique and multi-faceted individual; you should consider this (at length) pro and con. This is why clear and constant communication is the paramount consideration. You accomplish this by always hearing what your lover is saying, compassionately. Everyone will talk about themselves if there is someone listening to them and at times the person that listens will have to read between the lines to see what is being truly said; it might not be what you want to hear but possibly something that you should know. And I know it’s not easy to suspend judgment especially when the telling can hurt you, your status quo or mind set. I know.

Now let’s talk about a committed relationship or the institution of marriage: at best that can be a marriage relationship, at worst it can be committed to an institution, and all points in between. They’re never black or white, and require balance. Balance is never inert and you won’t maintain it except by constant reinvention.

            You do know that alternatively, this is all conjecture and has all the trappings of a load of bovine excretion. Each relationship is trial and error at best and all we pitiful humans can do is feel our way blindly through our lives and circumstances because “just when you’re thinking you finally got it made, bad news comes knocking at your garden gate”.

We all need to meditate on the nature of relationships, however, any of us that have even considered such a thing as ‘languages of love’ for any amount of time eventually come to the conclusion that they’re in morphemes, Braille and sign language.

In a perfect world a relationship of any type relies on a contract, spoken or not and spoken is best: be frank and upfront about what pleases you and what does not in your pairing,  from the beginning, and that, as a value, can only come from your experiences or the lessons learned from watching others succeed or fail. Know that love is a wonderful, fulfilling and fragile state of being and like a candle’s flame it needs tending, knowing when to cleave and when to let go. Love, any love is a supreme risk. How do I know? Survey says: there are more sad songs about love than happy ones.