Love as endurance, part two

[msagara]

I think this will be a post of three parts. The first part is about learning to love and live with our children. It’s one of three points I want to make. Love as endurance in that light is not only positive, but necessary.

We live in an age of convenience. Everything is about efficiency and ease. Iterations of household items and gadgets exist to

Comments

[allbery]

Wow. Thank you. I was not able, before reading this analysis, to put my finger on exactly what bothered me about unconditional love in relationships, but you capture the problem perfectly.

This is a great post.

The message that adult relationships are built on understanding what one needs and what one can give and finding matches for that, not based on willpower and unconditional anything, is one that I think needs to be spread much more widely.

[deire]

Not sure I would phrase it the same way (which doesn't, of course, make either of us wrong, it's just me thinking in type)....I can love people as people, but it doesn't mean I want them on my couch. Unconditional agape is not the same thing as unconditionally part of my life and unconditionally given my attention and energy.

[3rdragon]

We live in an age of convenience. Everything is about efficiency and ease.

Heh. I had a discussion the other month with one of my fellow expatriates about this:
"We used to call [the US] 'The Land of Plenty.' Now we call it 'The Land of Convenience,' because things ARE available here -- they're just easier there."
And she's right. There are very few things that absolutely Are Not Available here, and can't be found or made or finagled -- at least if you're in a city. (Of course, she's in a city and I'm not, so her inconvenience and my inconvenience are very different things. But then, she'd never made beans that didn't come out of a can before she got here, either.) But almost everything is more work, or requires more thought, or time, or planning.
I've realized that one effect of this is that I now ask myself questions like, Does this appliance make me happier? which I would never have thought to ask before. Washing machine, yes. (It's not too bad for just one person, as long as you can wear outfits multiple times, although

[comrade_cat]

I'm figuring out love from the younger end of the spectrum. Thank you for a really well thought out post.

[lyssabits]

I have met adults who somehow feel that this is wrong. And I’ve spoken with any number of adults who, after a break-up, itemize the things their ex is doing with their new partner with some anger: “If they had just done those things with me, I would have been happy! Why can they do them with someone else and not me?”

People who say this don’t actually see themselves in the relationship. They feel on some level that people are interchangeable - but that’s not the way relationships work. They feel, in fact, that love should be - that love is - unconditional, and that the universe is unfair.I'm going to offer an alternate explanation of this response. It's not always a question of these people not realizing that we're willing to do different things for different people, or that different people MAKE doing these different things easier or harder.. a lot of times, when my friends say this, they absolutely realize the point you've made. That people are not interchangeable, and some people are easier to love than others.. what they really