Love, what a wonderful word. A word that can bring a smile to your lips, a mistiness to your eyes and make your heart skip a beat. Love can bring a tear when reminiscing or a stab in your heart when you remember the pain. This one word can bring such joy and such sorrow at different times in your life.
The positive side of love brings memories of holding hands, soft kisses, shared dinners, family time, smiling children, holidays and a lifetime of fun. A fleeting moment can bring joy to your heart when reminiscing can last a lifetime. The joy of a grandmother and granddaughter playing a game, the first moment you hold your newborn, the first time you kiss a partner, the first glimpse of that special person as you reminisce over the years. Love brings us many positive situations of giving and receiving, of sharing bringing a depth to our lives like nothing else quite can. It brings joy, laughter, growth and experiences. It gives us the motivation to move forward and to build.
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The negative side of love brings with it memories of love lost, holding someone’s hand as they quietly slip away, death, a thousand times of hearing sorry from someone who doesn’t mean it, hardship to struggle and build a life together – that didn’t work – and sometimes also endless fights, unhappiness and violence.
All this in the name of love. So … when is love not love? I would like to suggest that love is not love if, more often, there is pain and grief rather than joy. Examples of this are times when someone cheats on a partner to fulfil their own selfish needs and then, out of greediness, returns to the person they cheated on with the words “but I love you”. Often the partner forgives them and takes them back only to be left never trusting that person and with a relationship that is never the same.
Worse still are couples or families that live arguing day in and day out about all manner of different things – jobs, health, money – and each day becomes a chore to live together. The sad side of this is that the children of such a relationship often learn to fight and to follow their parents’ example. They believe that this example is what a relationship is about; that this is what love should look like. Another example of when love is not love is when children abandon their elders simply because they don’t have the ‘time’ to include them in their life. Now what would have happened if the parent or grandparent had not had the time for the child when he/she was growing up?
Yesterday I spoke to a man whose sons tried to take his house away when their mother died. She had left half her house to the two boys and they decided they wanted the rest of it. Mum luckily had written in the will that they could not take it until the father passed on and their attempts failed in court. However, it was an ugly, messy court case and the two sons now no longer speak to the father. They felt he owed them the house, but dad dug his heels in. He has now lost his wife and his two children. This is not love.
The scenario brings to mind the woman down the road who has taken her cheating husband back more times than I can count after his drunken binge, out with other women. The last few times he hit her and the children were there, watching. Crying also. This is not love.
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Or the child that moved out years ago from the little town just past Coonabarabran to go to Sydney to start her life. Once every few months she gives dad a call. Too busy, too much work to take time out to visit and take a trip home. Mum had died years before but dad was a fighter, he would be OK. Dad got a headache one day. Told his mate he was going home to have a Panadol and a nap. Dad was found dead on the floor from a stroke. The daughter visited, flooding with tears. Too late. That is just another instance of love gone wrong. No time to love. Life a spin, busy – too busy to stop and share a drink, a word a smile. At the funeral she spoke of her love for her father. Did he ever know?
So what are the instances when you don’t take the time to stop? The time to share, the time to make time for those you love? When are the instances when, perhaps, you also should turn your back on the negativity that has been carried out in the name of love but that really isn’t love at all?
Any abuse is not love, cheating on you is not love, domestic violence is not love, prolonged arguments are not love, selfishness is not love, ignoring you is not love. Anything that does not benefit both of you, or your family, is not love; anything that leaves a hole in your heart is not love. You can kid yourself in these cases that the action is love, or that it will change, but sadly it will not.
The remedy, of course, is difficult and takes guts. Unfortunately, the only remedy for what is not love is to exclude that from your life. To close the door and to move on. Yes, it will be hard to do; yes, it may bring tears to your eyes; yes, it may leave a hole in your heart; and, no, it may never heal. The alternative is to live your life fooling yourself, living a lie. Remember that every time you close a door a new one will open – perhaps to love. Which do you choose? I know which one I would choose. I choose love.
