Can love conquer all?

Can Love Truly Conquer All?


If I could not say it enough, love is the most misused word in the English language. Think about it, women love their shoes and then they turn around and express love for their husband, but I guarantee that if her husband left her she would be more devastated then if she just broke her shoe, or maybe she would not, but then she never really “loved” her husband.

The Greek language has five words to describe love, the English language, one. Americans try to lump everything into one category, but leave it up to the Greeks to figure out that this is illogical. They broke love into categories. Agape, “love”, in modern day Greek, which is often described when talking about loving something unconditionally, no strings attached, they will take the good with the bad. Eros is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing and often described feelings one has for his or her lover. Philia means friendship in Greek, and it is a dispassionate love meant to include a loyalty toward friends and family. Storage means "affection" it is natural affection, mostly felt by parents for offspring, but unlike Agape it can be conditional. Thelema means, "desire" or "will", and this is where the idea of loving shoes, should be categorized.

When thinking about relationships Americans asses their mate based on Eros; a lustful love. As such, Americans have the highest divorce rate in the entire world. Lust goes away, period. Lust stems from chemicals produced by our brain, not our heart, and once the body stops producing these endorphins the ‘rose colored glasses’ come off. Reality is lust does not equal love, and it is the reason affairs occur. People think that, because they no longer lust after their significant other, they are missing something that supposedly should occur naturally in his or her relationship. When lust starts to fade, people seek it out elsewhere because they are addicted to the lustful dopamine produced in their brain, and partly because our society has brainwashed us into thinking that there should be magic in the bedroom every hour of everyday. Let me tell you that while yes your relationship should be magical, it has to be from a realistic point of view. Magic should occur simply by being in the presence of one’s significant other. A woman cannot expect her husband to come home after working overtime and immediately take her to the bedroom to sweep her off her feet. Likewise, a man cannot expect his wife to look like a playmate all hours of the day, especially when she has been home all day taking care of the kids. Not to mention that if she works and maintains the home her likely hood of 24-hour sex appeal is slim. Placing unrealistic expectations on a relationship is what leads to cheating. People are people, and if they jumped into a relationship because of lust, once it is gone, they in turn will deem their relationship over and hopefully, before they cheat, jump ship.

On the other hand, some lustful relationships can eventually lead into a natural affection. Often it is because the two individuals have been able to hold on to the lust long enough to experience real life together. For example, one of them loses a family member and the other is there to support them, or one person runs into money problems and the other helps them make their rent. These two scenarios build a bond that is bigger than lust, but it is not necessarily the right type of bond to make a relationship work long term. This type of bond is better described as obligation. Once a person helps another person, they naturally expect that the other will stay with them and commit themselves to them. “I helped pay their rent…why wouldn’t they be with me.” “She helped me through my mother’s death…I have to stay with her.” In these situations people will stay because they cannot justify leaving. The lust is gone, but the obligation is not. What is bad about these types of relationships is that they often turn into marriages, but they are not healthy marriages, or long lasting, and when I say long lasting, I mean more than 18 years. These people may work well together, have the same goals, but after awhile the feeling of obligation can turn into resentment. A person cannot make a life-long decision based on a few acts of kindness. What if that person experiences his or her own hardship in life and can no longer be there for that person. What if the person, who was once the giver, needs the receiver to turn into the giver? Is this even possible? Anything is possible with love right?

The only time that anything is possible with love, or when love can conquer all, is when you have an unconditional love, agape. The reality is lust fades and obligation can get annoying. When two people love each other unconditionally and are willing to take the good with the bad then yes love can conquer all, and yes, people can be both the giver and the receiver.

There are actually three stages to establish an unconditional love: lust, attraction, and attachment. If two people cannot reach all three stages, their relationship will never work long term. People have to establish a lust for another, even though it will not sustain a relationship. People need to be physically attracted to a person before they can even really be interested in them. Without lust, a person would never really work up the nerve or the motivation to ask them out on a date, but once they are out on a date a viable attraction needs to occur. Lust is often confused with attraction. Lust is based on someone’s physical appearance; attraction is based on a person’s attributes. This is the part where people see if they can build a relationship with the other person. It is the time to question if they have common interests, morals, and goals. If the two parties deem that there is even enough commonalities to continue dating then eventually attachment will occur. Attachment usually occurs within the first three years. By year three, if not by year two a person should be able to figure out if they could spend the rest of their life with another person, what they do about this realization is completely up to the individual. People stay even after they know it will not work for many absurd reasons and most of the time it is because it is just easier. Common friends are established, families have met, plans have been discussed, etc… Nevertheless, true attachment has not; the only thing that has been established is an excuse to stay. Excuse without reason is a death sentence for love. Couples have to focus on the reason to stay, the reason they are attached, the reason they love their partner unconditionally.

If two people want to spend the rest of their lives together, both parties must understand that both of them are going to make mistakes. If one were to ask a couple, who has been married for over 25 years, they will always be able to point out the years that were the hardest and the time that they wanted to give up. However what makes them stay together is that they were willing to get over their personal pride and work through the problem. When someone exposes a negative side to their personality people immediately question his or her love and use it as an excuse to walk away and find the person that they are “really” meant to be with and if a person can do this then they never reached the attached stage regardless of how long they stayed with a person. Establishing an unconditional love the type of love that can conquer all is a choice. It is why people stand on the alter and promise to love for better or for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health. It is a conscious decision to make sure that when roadblocks occur in one’s relationship that they do not run the other way, but face them head on, fix them and keep on moving. It understands that nothing in life is perfect, not even ‘love’. If two people go into a relationship understanding this then there is nothing that cannot be over came. The key to this however is that both parties make an effort, one cannot love the other unconditionally, while the other puts conditions on their love. The idea of love cannot conquer anything, but the willingness to commit and actively work through everything can. Agape can conquer the world…love cannot. Love is just an abstract word used to describe a fleeting emotion.