Day 5 : What is the Secret of Lasting Love?

I remember looking at a photo of a couple who got married in the sixties. It was one of those black and white pictures. She was wearing a mini skirt and he was wearing tight stylish trousers and was sporting a goatee. They were talking and laughing as they walked down the road towards the photographer. It was beautiful image of newly wed childhood sweethearts. Looking at their relationship now many decades later, I ask myself silently, “Where did the love go?” It seemed to have gone the same way as the goatee.

This is a question that many couples find themselves asking in frustration. Divorce rates are increasing. In America, they say 50% of marriages end in divorce. That is really a sad record. It’s a bit better in the United Kingdom where only 17 out of a hundred marriages end in divorce. We’re constantly hearing of celebrity break ups. Couples that were cooing at each other on camera and looking so much in love suddenly can’t stand the sight of each other. How come a lot of couples, celebrity and non-celebrity alike split up so acrimoniously? If they hated themselves that much in the first place, why did they ever get together?

Is there something they could have done to make their love last? Is there something that you can do so that you don’t find yourself walking in the same shoes as they did? In order for you to make your love last, you need to know what love really is and the different kinds of love that are necessary to your relationship.

What is love?

This looks like a really simple question, but it’s really a very difficult one to answer. The man on the street may not know that there are different kinds of love. When people think about the relationship between a man and a woman, they think that there is only one kind of love. And this is usually the love that is based on attraction or feelings. But we all know that feelings can change. They’re as fickle as the English weather. This is a major reason for marriage break ups: Having lost the earlier excitement they felt in the relationship, people say they’re no longer in love.

Feeling-based Love

Divorcing couples use these reasons all the time:

“We don’t love each other any more”
“We’ve fallen out of love”
“I don’t even like you any more…”

The kind of love they’re talking about is what I call feeling-based love. The Greeks called it eros. Eros is sensual love. The kind of love that excites and intoxicates. The kind that works like alcohol or a drug in the blood which makes you feel that if you don’t have that person you will die. This is why the effects of it can fade away the same as the effects of intoxication. Most people marry knowing and demonstrating this kind of love alone. But by it’s very nature cannot be depended upon to last.