I was younger once. I knew what it was like to be a teenager. To walk around thinking I had the whole world figured out, that I knew best--wait, I still do that. Scratch all of that. Regardless, I was once younger.
I have a mate, coming to the end of his teens and approaching his twenties chronologically, but developmentally still lagging a bit behind. I talk to him quite often and usually we get to the point in the conversation where I expose his lack of knowledge in soccer, world history, and whatever else and it turns into a conversation about how much he loves his girlfriend. His first girlfriend. A girl he radically changed his life for and now stands on the edge, teetering, trying to avoid the fiery crash off the cliff. Needless to say, they're in a rocky spot right now.
Today, we're chatting and he includes me in on what love really is. A 19 year old lad, in his first relationship, explained to me, Mr. Approaching-30-Married-Man, what love is. He summed it up in two words: trust, communication. I scoffed at him. I told the lad that any good friendship requires those two. That's not love, that's having successful relationships, whether between friends, parents, bosses, coworkers, teacher-student, whatever. Then I leveled with him. I told him one simple thing, something I believe wholeheartedly.
There is no such thing as love.
Okay, sure, the word exists. I love Mexican cuisine (authentic, not that shit los gabachos think is Mexican). I love banda and Duranguense music. I love Tottenham Hotspur and DC United. I love the Florida Gators. I love coffee. I love south Florida. I love podcasts. I could go on and on about what I love. I ialso say I love the wife, I love the kid, I love my bffs, I love cats. Same word, so many different connotations. But let's be real people, for one word to be so overhyped, so overused, no one can define it, no one really knows when they have it, and the shit just doesn't exist.
I've told my wife, whom I love without condition and to no end, this tons of times. I told her, "Q, there's no such thing as love." Then it's like well what do I mean if I love her but think love doesn't exist?!
When I say I love my wife, I mean this: sure, she's incredibly annoying, opinionated, stubborn, domestically challenged, loud, and can never say sorry or admit wrong in a timely fashion (if ever), but in spite of all of these obvious reasons to want to punch her in the throat repeatedly, I stand by her through it all and plan to do so until one of us dies. I mean, I promise to fuck her and only her, help her where she's deficient and stand back where she excels. I mean, from time to time, I'll snuggle up on her while she sleeps and I'll try to like most of her friends.
None of that is the love of The Notebook fame, Sex and the City fame, nor even Tyler Perry movie fame. The love I speak of, is what marriage is--a business deal; a legal and binding contract. I'll support you, you support me, we take care of shit together, and in the meantime we have some funny moments, really great sex, and we try not to kill each other. I know, this notion of love isn't incredibly or even remotely romantic, but it's stripped down of all the religious and Hollywood bullshit that's coated love for the longest.
In real life, there is no love at first sight, no long, unrequited love that suddenly turns requited and lives happily ever after, no fairy tales. Notice in all of the movies, books, and television shows, there's never talk of bills, bad breath, getting fat or sexually undesirable, erectile dysfunction. You know, the shit that actually makes life with your significant other complicated? The worst part about Hollywood is it has my daughter convinced that there's Prince Charming and happily ever after. Now I'll have to go in her head later and undo all the shit that those fucking Princesses did to her brain.
My wife and I both were those people who believed in love and the romantic connotations involved. We wanted big weddings just for the show and because it's what people do. We probably both tried to be "romantic" to our past partners. Now, we're past a year of marriage, wedded in the courthouse, and we merely try to survive life in a capitalistic economy that's down the tank while raising a soon-to-be four year old and again, not kill each other. Yeah, not as easy nor as fun as what people would like to think. But to me, that's fucking love!
Just think about how much money people waste on love! Pheromone perfumes and colognes, self-help books, therapy, countless drinks at the bars, dinners, movies, little black dresses, eHarmony subscriptions, match dot com, love guru seminars, and many more. But no one ever says, "Hey, there's no such thing as compatibility." There's no such thing as compatibility. At least, not in the denotation of the word. Men and women as a whole are too different, see the world differently, think differently, express emotions differently, so how the hell are we compatible? Examine yourself. You get along much better with your same sex friend than you do your opposite sex partner. My female best friend and I, pretty good, but then again, with me, she's one of the lads. She swears with her mates, she's a girly girl. I can't even envision that.
We're not meant to be together except to procreate. Monogamy isn't real. We're animals. We're no different than rabbits and apes. We're geared to fuck, not spend eternity with one person while madly in love. Come on, son. Men cheat, women cheat, we both look at others outside of our mates; it's not real. It's so unreal that we have to work at it and make sure we're monogamous. You know why? Because it's not what we're supposed to be. I'll never cheat on my wife, but then again I'll never cheat on anyone. But it's not because I'm so much in love and no one exists. It's I wouldn't do that to my wife because it's plain wrong and two, my dad was a huge cheater. So nuture, not nature, makes me faithful.
Give it up, people. The quicker you give up the ghost of what love is and means, the quicker you'll find someone you can get along with, in spite of their idiosyncrasies and quirks. I wish you luck. I wish you all the success in finding a mate that I've found. Now let me return to two of my great loves: soccer and coffee.
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