Love's Inconvenient Truth

The last time I wrote about love, I pondered what it meant to me now that I'm poly. In that post, I talked about there being more than one kind of love, that love can be scary, that I don't have to love two people in the same way, and that love isn't always what we see on TV. To that, I will add one more:

Love is not enough.

Author Mark Manson discussed this very concept on his blog, which resonated with me and made me look back at how much stock I've put into love throughout the years to be the end-all, be-all to my relationships. Not only did I think as long as there was love the relationship would be emotionally satisfying, I also thought that as long as there wasn't love, the relationship was over. While in some cases the second might be true, neither are true 100% of the time, and that presence or absence of love is not what dictates the happiness of all parties in a relationship. 

All three of his main points resonated with me. Like "Love does not equal compatibility": when I married my ex-husband, it didn't matter that his chosen career path (medicine) and my lack of career path would cause problems. It didn't occur to me that his desire to sit at home most nights and my desire for adventure would cause problems. It definitely didn't occur to me that his desire for children and my indifference would cause problems, and I'm utterly grateful we never got that far (and am happy he now has the baby he wanted).

I thought, too, of my relationship with my ex, and others, regarding "Love is not always worth sacrificing yourself." I've been so ready in the past to pack up my own desires (whether I knew what they were or not) and follow someone else, that I'm surprised I haven't found myself in more miserable situations. 

And finally, there's this: "Love does not solve your relationship problems." 

Manson writes that "while love may make you feel better about your relationship problems, it doesn’t actually solve any of your relationship problems." In fact, I think it can make them worse. It makes the highs of a relationship temporarily drown out the lows, so that the lows are tolerated for much, much longer than they should be. This is the most obvious in situations of emotional and physical abuse, but it can also harm perspective when no one is really "at fault." 

Adam and I have been together almost for a year, and I've spent a lot of that time trying to adjust to a relationship that had more challenges than I'd faced before. The biggest challenge was a disparity in emotion, and even moreso, a disparity in how he saw me as a partner as opposed to how I saw him. For a long time, I thought that if he ever told me he loved me back, our disparity would lessen. But then he did,  and while it made me feel all kinds of warm fuzzies, it didn't change much else. Love didn't solve our relationship problems - we have to tackle those ourselves, by taking a break and re-evaluating if there even is a middle ground for us after all.

I don't want to stop thinking about love as something special, but I have learned that I need to stop using it as an excuse to stay with someone (or stay in a certain arrangement with someone) when so many other things are missing or not working. I would recommend everyone - no matter your relationship style - go check out Manson's post. It's not a happy truth when we think about it, but it is a truth, and I hope that by taking it to heart, someday the happiness will follow.