Falling in love
The hands on the clock won’t move any faster, no matter how hard I stare at them or how hard I try to ignore them. As a matter of fact, I think they might even have slowed down. It’s almost as if the clock knows how badly I want this day to be over and is slowing down on purpose just to torture me. Ralph is at work and I am at work and if that stupid clock doesn’t start moving, this day will never end and I’ll never see him again! And that’s all I want; to see him again. To be where he is, doing what he’s doing, even if he’s not doing anything at all. I don’t need anyone or anything other than him.
Does that sound familiar? If you’ve ever been in love, it should. The first stages of love are a breathtaking whirlwind of romance, passion, desire, hope and longing that temporarily take over your entire life, your entire being. All you can think about and all you want, is the one that you love. But life involves much more than just the love of your ‘one in particular’ and so, as time marches on, love naturally progresses from the all encompassing first stage into the slower, steadier stage of growing and abiding love. This is the stage of love that makes room in your new world for things like; friends, family, work, children, hobbies and so on. If you’re just embarking on this wondrous journey for the first time, I’ll let you in on a little secret; the stages of love aren’t actually stages, they’re seasons. A stage is something you reach, cross over, and then move beyond. A season, on the other hand, is something that comes around again and again and again in a never ending circle. Each season serves a purpose and one always leads into another. The season of steady and abiding love is a treasure to be cherished and it’s nurtured and kept alive by the season of romance and passion. I think many a relationship has ended too soon because one or both of the parties involved assumed incorrectly that their love must not have been real because romance and passion gave way to something not quite as fiery, not quite as bright. If only they’d known that as surly as Spring follows Winter, romance and passion follow steady and abiding love.
When love is new, take the time to marvel in it and be consumed by it. But don’t forget that before you met your love, you had a life and a circle of people who loved and cared for you, who in fact still do love and care for you. They understand what you’re going through so even though they will miss your presence in their lives, they comfort themselves with the knowledge that this loss is temporary. That one day soon this new relationship will settle into a comfortable, confident season and you’ll again pick up the people and things you once enjoyed, though perhaps not as often as you once did. Friends and family know that they must make room in their lives for the one you hold so dear but you must know something too; you and your new love must make room in your new life for the lives you lead before you became one. If you don’t allow your partner the time and space to enjoy the people and things he or she enjoyed before you met, your love will be a selfish one. Demanding all of your partners’ time and attention is just you loving yourself, not you loving your partner. One-sided love affairs can never last because one side does all the giving while the other does all the consuming. Eventually, the giving side runs out of fuel and the fire dies.
Life Lesson: Choose to be an unselfish partner. Allow your loved one to enjoy the people and things that he or she enjoyed before you came into his or her life and choose for yourself a partner who will give you the same consideration. Enjoy the all encompassing season of new love! Relish it! But don’t get stuck there. Make room again in your life for the people and passions that you knew before. After all, it was these people and passions that shaped you into the person that you are today, the person that your partner fell in love with. Don’t stop being that person and don’t let your partner do it either. Give each other the freedom to be the people that you fell in love with.
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