A few weeks ago a friend and I caught up. It felt like an age since we last spoke and we had much to catch up on. She shared stories of love that came, love that left and love that she thought was lost. Hers was a story of forbidden love. As archaic as it may seem, she couldn't marry a man who was beneath her in education. This wasn't her choice. She was moving interstate and her family was utterly opposed to her pairing with a man with seemingly lesser intelligence. He said he was prepared to fight for her, she wasn't so sure of her love.
She knew she'd never been made to feel as desirable as she felt with him. She knew nobody had ever shown her that compassion or that kindness but when she didn't rebel against her parents’ wishes, he disappeared, not a single battle was fought. He just left. She would wonder for now if she made the right decision but would rest securely in the fact that the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing.
Being religious she knew that God would never punish her for being obedient to her parents. Honouring their wishes was all she knew. That would be enough for the time being.
The thing she was missing was that if he was expecting her to fight for his love against all odds, he would have to fight for her love too. He didn't. She didn't and Jason Derulo released a song about doing it.
Both instances got me thinking at what point in a relationship does someone decide to fight for the love that exists and when do you decide that it's ok to throw in the towel?
The issue is too broad for me to cover all instances of relationships (and frankly I don’t have the brainpower to do it today), but I’m talking about the intermediate stages of dating or infatuation.
Breakups are not new news but the frequency of them these days is, so what would we make you stay? Is the short term pain for long term gain worth it or should everything come up roses before you accept a lifetime pairing with a person? I think there's only one thing you need to be sure of before you enter the battlefield; that being the potential for love between you both.
For my friend being unsure of her love was the first alarm bell that it was not worth fighting for. But what of cold feet? Honestly, I don’t think it exists.
In relationships I’ve known of and that have lasted there has never been the smallest inkling that the relationship was temporary. Neither party ever fought with the intention nor the option of leaving, neither party ever believed they couldn’t recover from an argument and none of them ever threatened it. If you are with someone for life, you don’t contemplate a life without them and when leaving is an option that you’re comfortable with (particularly in the early stages of dating), then that’s exactly the time to go.
The stories of striving and struggle for love that I’ve enjoyed and believed in most are when a man has found and fought for the woman he is taken by. When loving her was the only emotion he cared for, when losing her was unfathomable, when winning her love was the only ending contemplated and when in the end he did.
What I’ve seen in instances where he has worked for her love first is a love greater in capacity returned to the man than he imagined could ever be given to him. I know of a guy who hoped for my friend’s love for his entire youth. He never thought he could get her love. When he did, she called herself the lucky one. She had a man, who knew what he wanted, went after it and spent a lifetime grateful for having won – that was exactly what she wanted in the end too.
I know many feminists would be in a head-spin about me making women sound like a game to be won, but I actually believe that a man that knows a woman’s worth, would always fight regardless of the rejections for her heart and that is a feminist thought in itself. It is not passivity or submission, it is acknowledgement of your worth and acceptance that you are worth the battle.
We may live in an age where women share many freedoms and within those freedoms is a choice to fight for the man you love, but in my friend’s case and many of yours, I’d only ever encourage a sister to fight, if she was fought for first….
No comments:
Post a Comment