I wanna know what Love is

By Gina Brillon

Today, while reaching for the first aid kit, I pulled a muscle in my butt cheek, how ironic.  Here I was reaching for help and getting hurt in the process.  It dawned on me that perhaps while working out I had over done it, pushed just a little too hard.  I was so determined to work out every part of my body to the full extent, that I literally put my butt in danger.  It was the physical embodiment of how I am when I’m in love.  In retrospect, my word of the week, I realize that the demise of my past relationships might have fallen apart for the same reason my body now seemed to be falling apart, I pushed way too hard.

             In his poem “The More Loving One” W.H. Auden writes ‘ If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me’ it seems there is always an imbalance in relationships, one person loving more than the other, well according to my research that is.  I’m not exactly sure where this imbalance stems from but it seems prevalent in every relationship. Why is it that when two people share a life together there is always one more willing or likely to sacrifice? Is there room for equality in love or is it necessary that one person have the upper hand?

I’m currently on my third long term monogamous relationship, I was with a man for 5yrs who said he could never love me like I loved him, I dated another man for 3yrs that wanted to keep me in the backseat for the sake of his career and my current boyfriend well we’ve just had our first “Facebook relationship status” fight (why is it that guys have such a problem putting the “In a relationship” status on their pages?). The commonality in all these relationships was that I gave,gave,and gave more almost smothering the person with love.   

            They (the relationship gurus) say the key to a long lasting happy relationship is communication, but that seems highly unlikely if most relationships are totalitarian. Do you want to know the most ironic part of this whole scenario?  You would think that the one who loves more would be the ruler, WRONG! Quiet often “the more loving one”  who ends up just doing whatever it takes to keep his/her partner happy, so what, you’re a glorified court jester?  Dancing around trying to please the royals!!! No wonder relationships are so hard, they’re just like politics! And if we can’t get something as simple as democracy to work, how on earth do we expect to perfect or even understand the complexity of relationships?

            What’s a girl to do when the scales of love are so grossly one sided? This is more a question for you out there. Do you feel like love is unbalanced? And is love the ability to accept this imbalance rather than try to correct it?  I wanna know what love is, to you.