True love, real love, including romantic love, come from above. Analytics, metrics, copious sexual experiences, misguided perceptions of Christian doctrine and even literature fall short. Of course, much of humanity, thinks otherwise...Excellent post, though.
I will say that the romantic love found in literature comes closest to a love created in the supernatural. My fiancée and I are devoted romantics and wholeheartedly embrace what you have described. However, ours is a Christ-centered relationship and it is much, much more uplifting, edifying, passionate and loving than the secular-based ones we experienced in the past.
As Iris Murdoch wrote: Extreme love must bring terror with it. Great job, Liza, but you really owe it to yourself to read Christina Nehring's A Vindication of Love. She points out that prior to about the 20th century or so, romantic love was always understood as a sublime but dangerous force that can elevate human beings to the greatest possible ecstasy on this earth, but, and this is the crucial part, will always lead to unbearable pain-that is, if you really are doing it right. She starts with the very first feminist, Mary Wolstonecroft, and points out that this paragon of modern women's rights completely destroyed herself over love of a man. And algorithms and metrics are beside the point-you'll know when you are really taken over by love, I mean the real thing, not the boring therapeutically-approved modern kind-it will Break Blow and Burn you, in John Donne's words. Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck put it even better- 'The storybooks are bullshit! Love don't make everything alright! It breaks your heart! We are put on this earth to love the wrong people and break our hearts and die!'
I either meet people in real life organically or I go without. Typically this means I go without. Dating apps are cancer.
I do think that the Hollywood style of "true love" can be dangerous. It cannot last. True love is found once that passionate phase recedes and the banality of what happens after "happily ever after" kicks in.
That doesn't mean you can't be romantic. But true love's greatest expression is sitting around together comfortably without needing some great passionate story to play out. Just doing the dishes, working out, reading, chatting. Being in each others' company.
A candle can last for days. A bonfire only lasts a few hours.
True love, real love, including romantic love, come from above. Analytics, metrics, copious sexual experiences, misguided perceptions of Christian doctrine and even literature fall short. Of course, much of humanity, thinks otherwise...Excellent post, though.
I will say that the romantic love found in literature comes closest to a love created in the supernatural. My fiancée and I are devoted romantics and wholeheartedly embrace what you have described. However, ours is a Christ-centered relationship and it is much, much more uplifting, edifying, passionate and loving than the secular-based ones we experienced in the past.
Thanks for sharing your story! I fell in love with my wife at first sight 38 years ago. She’s my number one and there is no number two.
As Iris Murdoch wrote: Extreme love must bring terror with it. Great job, Liza, but you really owe it to yourself to read Christina Nehring's A Vindication of Love. She points out that prior to about the 20th century or so, romantic love was always understood as a sublime but dangerous force that can elevate human beings to the greatest possible ecstasy on this earth, but, and this is the crucial part, will always lead to unbearable pain-that is, if you really are doing it right. She starts with the very first feminist, Mary Wolstonecroft, and points out that this paragon of modern women's rights completely destroyed herself over love of a man. And algorithms and metrics are beside the point-you'll know when you are really taken over by love, I mean the real thing, not the boring therapeutically-approved modern kind-it will Break Blow and Burn you, in John Donne's words. Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck put it even better- 'The storybooks are bullshit! Love don't make everything alright! It breaks your heart! We are put on this earth to love the wrong people and break our hearts and die!'
Congratulations on your engagement!!
It can happen – and does. This is from my book The Wild Sonnets: Volume I (1-100). Written for my wife in our 25th year of marriage:
Wild Sonnet #99
Are we not unto each other bound
As ink and paper are? Each act and utterance
You perform are upon me printed,
As are daily mine on you. Dictation,
Diary and duet at once, a composing paired
Where every moment, line and level look
To be inscripted in each other’s book.
----------------
Let me recite then what I see and know:
That we are to each – the other’s hinted half –
Which holds just out of reach. But for the mirror’s
Mention, I do not see the pigment
And parameter my fronted figure paints,
But the illustration of what ill-conceives
The all of yours that’s lettered on the leaves.
© 2018
www.wildsonnets.com
Love this! Congratulations!
Congratulations, Liza! I’m hoping for a similar story myself—I too grew up on classic old love stories in literature. :)
Congratulations Liza. I'm very happy for you.
I either meet people in real life organically or I go without. Typically this means I go without. Dating apps are cancer.
I do think that the Hollywood style of "true love" can be dangerous. It cannot last. True love is found once that passionate phase recedes and the banality of what happens after "happily ever after" kicks in.
That doesn't mean you can't be romantic. But true love's greatest expression is sitting around together comfortably without needing some great passionate story to play out. Just doing the dishes, working out, reading, chatting. Being in each others' company.
A candle can last for days. A bonfire only lasts a few hours.