Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Romance is in the air. Heart shaped candy boxes and bouquets of flowers offer up syrupy sentiments of love, sweet love. Alas, all too often come February 15 the Hallmark card is in the trash and we’re back to struggling with the ups and downs of our relationship with the significant other in our lives.
So just what is the answer to Cole Porter’s haunting lyric, “What is this thing called love?” If there is anyone who can accurately answer the question it’s us seniors who have survived being impaled by Cupid’s arrow. We’ve got the perspective that comes with age (and for most of us, the scars that prove it!). Looking back with the help of my therapist wife’s monthly newsletter, four stages of a relationship come into focus.
First there’s the falling in love stage, becoming infatuated with our idea of the other rather than the true identity that is the other person. Next comes the disillusionment; inevitable because our ideal is not based on reality but rather is a product of our own making. Many relationships end here, dissolved by failed attempts to hold on to the euphoria of the “in love” feeling.
The third stage – confrontation with reality – may be the most difficult, requiring us to go beyond flighty and ego-centered cloud nine feelings, willingly opening ourselves to consideration of the other person’s motives. To propel a relationship past this phase it takes unequivocal honesty and genuine listening skills to determine the existence of a shared reality and common cause. The effort is worth it because it leads to the final stage, true love, an appreciation of the other’s unique strengths, personality and character… a view of the person as he or she is, rather than as we idealized them initially. In essence we fall in love all over again, this time with the reality of who our partner is rather than the fantasy we had in the initial stage of the relationship.
Of course if it is as simple as one, two, three, four, why do half the couples that hitch up each year, split up? In actuality it is no easy matter to understand what the barriers are within yourself, let alone understand your partner’s perspective. I do have one bit of advice for my women readers. If you’re looking for a man find one with pierced ears. He’ll be better prepared for marriage having already experienced pain and purchased jewelry. Not to end on a frivolous note here’s a quote from the Course Of Miracles that’s on the mark when it comes to love, “Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
