Why Love is Never as Nice as It Should Be

       I have read a talk by a British philosopher Alain De Botton, who once said in his book “The Course of Love”, “Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

       It’s a wonderful thing to be in love. The reunion of two lost souls and the longing of two warming hearts made lives seems so joyful yet reassuring. However, as flawed human beings, there are things we need to know and learn before we set ourselves up for the grand romance.

       First of all, as Botton pointed out, that our idea for love is ruined by modern-day romantic fiction. The glance of a girl that makes a guy drool while she slow-motionly turns away her head, the tickling warming feeling inside your heart that is too complex and magical to describe, the quitting jobs and running away to Paris in the name of love, gives us the social script of how love should be. So we panic when we don’t instantly fall in love with someone at first sight, we hesitant when we realize our partner isn’t perfect and fart in bed, we doubt ourselves if we are really in love when we sometimes loses the passion that we first have for our partner.

       However, love is not just the indescribable feeling, but more importantly, a skill that we need to learn. Botton suggested that love is a classroom rather than a fairy tale. We need to first have self-awareness and know all the flaws we have and the baggages that come from the failure of our caregiver here and there. We need to be well aware and fully knowledgeable of our past knowing our partner comes with baggages too. Until then, we can learn to love with forgiveness and empathy of their mistakes while they supposed to know us perfectly when they have reminded us of the longing for a distant mother or the fear for an angry father that we once experienced. And then, can we see the once fragile child in them and in us.

       We need be the teacher as well as the student in marriage. Though it’s important for them to “love us as we are”, when they ask you to pick up the dirty towel off the bathroom floor, they are only teaching you to be the best version of yourself.