I got this interesting text on email today. Something for couples my age, maybe younger, maybe older, to ponder upon.

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Young Love

It is natural for young people to fall in love as it if for flowers to bloom in spring.And yet, the agonies of love are many and varied. While everyone is free to fall in love Or be attracted to someone, and no one has the right to meddle in your private affairs,I feel it is also important not to lose sight of pursuing your own personal development.

There are of course no rules on love and marriage, and no one has the right to restrict you in anyway. But I hate to see young people getting involved in frivolous relationships, and suffering and agonizing over them when they should be fulfilled and happy.

To me, love should be a force that helps us expand our lives and bring out our potential with fresh vitality. This is ideal, but all too often, people lose all objectivity when they fall in love.

The question is ‘Does this person inspires you to work harder, or distract you from what you have to do? Does their presence make you more determined to devote great energies to your activities, to be a better person? Do they inspire you to realize your future goals and work towards them? Or is that person your central focus, overshadowing everything else?’

If you find that you are neglecting things you should be doing, forgetting your purpose in life because of the relationship you are in, then I would guess that you might be on the wrong path. A healthy relationship, in my view, is one in which two people encourage each other to reach their respective goals, while sharing each other’s hopes and dreams. A relationship should be a source of inspiration, invigoration and hope.

Rather than becoming so love-struck that you create a world in which only the two of you exist, it is much healthier to learn from those aspects of your loved one that you respect and admire, and continue to make efforts to improve and develop yourself. Antione de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, once wrote, ‘ Love is not two people gazing at each other, but two people looking ahead together in the same direction.’

Of course, much of daily life tends to be ordinary and unexciting. Making steady efforts to improve ourselves can be trying. And then when you fall in love, life seems filled with drama and excitement and you feel like the leading character in a book. But if you lose yourself in love just because you are bored, and veer from your path in life, then love is nothing more than escapism. But sadly many people believe that this kind of love is the be-all and end-all, deluding themselves that as long as they are in love, nothing else matters.

Even if you try to use love as an escape, the euphoria is unlikely to last for long. If anything, you may only find yourself with more problems along with a great deal of pain and sadness. However much you may try, you can never run away from yourself. If you remain weak inside, suffering will only follow you wherever you go. You never find happiness if you do not change yourself from within. Happiness is not something that anyone else, even a lover, can give you. You have to achieve it by yourself. And the only way to do so is by developing your own character and capacity as a human being, by fully maximizing your potential. If you sacrifice your own growth and talent for love, you absolutely will not find happiness.

My concern in saying this is purely for the sake of young people – particularly young women who are often so vulnerable to persuasion by young men. They can sometimes act as if they are stunned and lose their ability to make calm, rational decisions. Since young women are the ones who most often get hurt, they have every right to assert their dignity and look after their own welfare.

It is demeaning to be constantly seeking approval. If you find yourself in a relationship where you are not treated the way your heart is tells you should be, I hope you will have the courage and dignity to decide that you are better off alone for the time being rather than enduring an unhappy relationship.

Real love is not two people clinging to each other; it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality. A shallow person will only have shallow relationships. If you want to experience real love, it is important first to develop a strong self identity. True love is not about doing whatever the other person wants you to do, or pretending that you are something that you are not. Ideal love is fostered only between two sincere, mature and independent people.
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What was written by the author is constantly behind my mind. A lot of what he/she wrote is basically what i feel/think too. The world and yourself do not revolves around your partner. I'm not being negative of the people who does, but there's more to life than your other half. One loses it's rationality when one is in love. Everything is for love, but... What is love?

The perspective of love changes in every stage of life. In the first stage love is like cocaine. Addictive, can't get enough of it. But in the end, is love just a feeling of wanting to hold on to the relationship for all the wrong reasons. Is that love?