SmokeAndMirrors
DP Veteran
- Joined
- May 20, 2011
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And that's the root of all its problems. You don't - and can't - know how your partner is going to feel over the next several decades, and neither does your partner. No matter how sincere you feel today, it doesn't mean you can commit to something for the rest of your life.
Sure it does. At least for people who decide that is what they're going to do, and assuming no one is abusive or otherwise intolerable.
Do you always like your friends? Your family members?
I doubt it. Yet you love them all the same, and just because sometimes it seems like a chore doesn't mean you don't.
People seem to have this idea that partner love is totally unlike any other kind of love. That unlike other kinds of love, which require work and which are not always fun, partner love is actually a magical spirit that simply possesses people for a time, transforming them into an intoxicating drug you can use as you please. When that possession ends, or you simply grow bored of the high, it's time to leave and chase the spirit into whatever body it inhabits next.
That isn't true. Partner love works like every other kind of love. Your feelings may vacillate, but ultimately love is a choice and something which is deeper than simply the tingly feelings in various parts of your body, and it doesn't change unless you allow it to. Just like friends and family.
I think the mistake people make, in actuality, is either expecting their partner to be constantly entertaining, as though they were an amusement park ride, or being overly rigid in their expectation of closeness with their partner -- not allowing things to ebb and flow, as friends and family do.