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While there are various kinds of love, there is something special about the romantic love. However, it may be the frailest of them all, says the author!
Love. A word, a feeling, a relationship, a habit, an instinct, a need, a desire, a realisation, a pain, a regret, a lesson. It holds the power of many dimensions.
The love of a new born baby for his mother who has just opened his eyes in the world. Or that of the new parents which supersedes everything else they have lived with and loved.
The love of a young kid for his toys, for his new books. Or that of friends, one of whom feels sad when the other doesn’t attend school on a particular day.
The love of a writer for his work and that of an artist for his masterpiece. Or the love of an entrepreneur for his business that he started from scratch- to the point where he calls it his baby.
And the love of lovers.
Love exists all around us all the time. It exists in forms we can’t intentionally comprehend. But it is there. We have lived it, lived by it, lived because of it, never realising its role at the time. Why? Because it is so deeply rooted in our personalities and disguised as routine.
Except one day when as a youngster, as a teenager, we feel this form of love – the romantic love. This guy who I just cannot get over. Whose presence makes my heart pound and absence leaves me craving. He is so like-minded and understanding that I am sure he is my soulmate.
I love his company. And I love to keep thinking about him. I have loved many people and things in these seventeen years of my life. However, nothing ever took up so much of my soul and spirit, as my love for him.
And I did justice to all my former love forms in the most naïve manner, without my mind making intentional efforts of doing so. I loved and it came on its own. And I nurtured all those forms of love effortlessly and the journey has always been so smooth and peaceful.
So here I am today, as my life brings me to a new form of love, my romantic love. I feel as if this is the first time, I have loved something and someone. So much passion, so much excitement, and so much thinking does this new form of love entail that I feel overwhelmed.
Love, after all, is a human instinct. And I have, although unconsciously, practiced it all these years in so many forms, then what is this new dimension to it now? There is nothing that diminishes my passion. Every day I am diving deeper into the ocean of love.
As the years pass, I mature as a lover, my passion grows, my love deepens. And I discover that my soul is now committed to never letting him go away. I want him to be with me for the rest of my life.
Life progresses at its own pace for me and for him, we get married. The social stamp approving and formalising my romantic love has been attained. I did justice to this form of love as well. And succeeded in helping it attain a milestone- the wedding.
We are now spouse and not lovers any more. Yes, lovers no more!! He loves me dearly, cares for me. We spend time together and he even surprises me. He does all that is required of him to be a wonderful husband.
We are now parents to two beautiful kids, and I am very fortunate to have for my kids a doting father. He has spent more on us than on himself. I have a husband every girl would desire to have.
It’s a stage of life which brings along some newer forms of love to us – our kids, our careers, our social activities, our financial goals. And both of us have been doing fairly well at all of these.
But our romantic love is nowhere. Where, when and how did we lose it? No, none of us ever cheated, none of us is upset with the other. We only have the very normal differences of opinion on the trivial matters of life. Neither did we ignore each other. Then what was it?
Just yesterday he left for an official trip and I miss him. He calls me every few hours. But then what happened to our romantic love? None of us feels the passion anymore.
We are to each other a habit, a need we cannot afford to survive without, completely addicted to and dependent on each other. But this is not the love it was.
They say marital responsibilities, kids, extended families, professional demands, social obligations and financial burdens shape our lives differently. So much so that we see an increasing number of couples splitting away. But we have handled all of this so well and have succeeded in building a peaceful life for us and our kids. Then what took away my romantic love away from my life? Why does it look so frail?
The once most superior form of love is now the frailest of all. A few moments of this interrogation with myself and I am consumed already. My mind refuses to carry on with this mission of finding the what, when, why and how of losing my romantic love. So here I am giving in to the frailty of it all.
Picture credits: Pexels
Born in Ethiopia and did my primary schooling in United Arab Emirates and New Delhi, I graduated in International Business and Finance from Delhi. Worked for nearly four years in the corporate world, choosing to read more...
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