The Harsh Truth About Love
They kept crying, uncontrollably.
I have seen them. Men and women. Tortured, devastated, torn apart — after their romantic relationships came to an end.
More often than not, it was like someone had thrown them into a dark abyss. A pit that was full of evil, misery, and trauma. A hole from where there was no way to climb back to the surface of the earth.
It was like everything around them was in tatters. So much commotion in their head. So much pain in their heart.
“It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.”
— Margaret Atwood
I tried to console them. But I failed.
They did not seek solace. They wanted something that I was not able to give them.
They wanted their lovers back. They wanted to be with people who had left them. The people they loved with all their heart left today, and they wanted everything to be like yesterday.
It turned out that even they themselves were not able to find a way to get back what they had lost.
Some of them prayed to God, implored him to cast a spell on their ex-lovers’ hearts so that love would be there again.
I do not know whether or not their plea fell on deaf ears, but their wishes were not fulfilled eventually.
When I was alone at home, I recalled their words. I tried to analyse their situations.
That is when I noticed a common pattern in how they had described their romantic relationship.
They said they never thought that their relationship would end, that their sweethearts would leave them.
They thought their relationship was a robust structure capable of withstanding even the strongest earthquakes of Japan, but it felt like a house of cards gone with the wind when they were abandoned.
They thought it was permanent. The love, the romance, the affection.
The joy of eating ice cream together. The blissful moment of holding hands and walking down the street when it was raining. The happiness of watching twilight from the sandy beach.
There was a time when I was like them, too. I thought along the same lines.
I loved people, but they left me. I prioritised people who found my love suffocating.
I was tortured. I was devastated. I was torn apart… until the day I understood the real rule of love. It was like a wake-up call.
Do you want to know that rule?
Here it is:
Love is not permanent. It is conditional.
Of course, love is beautiful, but it comes with conditions. That is its inherent rule.
Love is born between two people with the condition that it can end — not necessarily it will end, but it can.
I know how hard it is to digest this rule, but it is what it is.
Think about it this way — if you have left your lover or vice versa, there was a time when you two were not in love. There was a time when you two did not even know each other.
Somehow you guys met at some point in your lives. After the introduction, you got to know each other at a deeper level. Then you developed feelings for them. Then you were in love when the feelings were mutual.
A relationship was thus born.
But where was it written in the process of creation of the relationship that it would stay forever? What made you think or believe that the love you had for each other was meant to live until both of you were dead?
Love was conditional in the history of mankind. Love is conditional as we live in the present world.
Love will be conditional till the doomsday.
This is not a conspiracy. This is how love works. Love has its own rules. It does not (and will never) follow the rules that you set for it.
If you do not want to be tortured, devastated, and torn apart, accept the rules of love and play by them.
You will be much happier, I promise.
