by Lanre Olagunju

It is not enough that a man be born, he must learn to live. It’s not enough that a man should live; he must learn to love and master to bear the pain, thrill and excitement that comes with love.

It is not enough that a man be born, he must learn to live. It’s not enough that a man should live; he must learn to love and master to bear the pain, thrill and excitement that comes with love. What can be more exhilarating than to be in love? Yet, giving one’s heart in a relationship doesn’t only entail giving the other person the right to love you back alone, it also makes one susceptible to been hurt, tool. No matter how close or how emotionally connected we are with another person, to a large extent, we still can never fully know and understand another person’s design, which predominantly structures why they behave the way they do, their motivations, belief system, philosophies, passions, dreams and goals. At best we can only derive an approximation based on assumption of their actions.

And come to think of it, an assumption they say is the least form of knowledge. The manufacturer of the mind, God, describes his own product saying. “The heart is a twisted thing, not to be searched out by another mortal: who is able to have knowledge of it?”

Questions relating to when you should make known or public your love affair and whether true love is blind or crippled has always and will ever remain a subjective topical love issues. Love is a great motivator in every relationship, but the fact that we fall into it probably explains why a one time lover gets demoted to suddenly become “just a good friend” like we say it when the whole thing begins to dwindle away into history or a foe when things become terribly sour. Maybe when we begin to walk, against falling, love might restore its blind sight.

“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place, you see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image. It’s part of them; it’s not the whole picture. ” pop idol and six-time Grammy award winner, Whitney Houston, told Rolling Stone in 1993. Yeah love is all that matters and it does conquers all things, but when maturity meets with love, it births a superior orientation that makes one see common sense beyond a common tool in any relationship. Because it hurts to be left alone by someone you love. It hurts to love someone who can’t love you back. But what hurts the most is to end a relationship that was never even destined to start. For instance If a bird falls in love with a fish, where would they live? Who gets the fins and who loses the wings? It’s an irony. That’s how cruel but poetic love can be.

Many are of the opinion that if Whitney Houston never met Bobby Brown, probably her life would have been less tragic and far from a striking cautionary tale. Even when we eventually settle with that bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, the question of whether love is all that counts still arises. I’ve repeatedly heard those married for donkey years say things like “understanding, patience and endurance is all that matters” some out of their own personal ‘not so exciting’ experiences go as far as categorically predicting that you should at some point expect that your spouse will come up with characters and traits absolutely synonymous of a stranger, and you just beginning to wonder where on earth you got this person from. This is far from the image of love the media paints. They only showcase the feel good hormonal responses that bind two people initially, and then they edit reality away. “There isn’t a perfect relationship, the major point is to keep learning and then keep moving forward” a married adult friend once stressed to me.

Let me share the misery of a man I read some years back in one of those Funmi Akingbade’s sex and sexuality columns on Saturday Punch Newspaper. This particular man, on Funmi’s column, was demanding for help to manage his psychological trauma. After forgiving his wife, he still had issues struggling with the mental play back of another man’s sex organ inside her. This happened after both partners, in a playful atmosphere, asked questions related to how they coped when both were temporarily separated by distance. The woman at one point confessed that she had a onetime secret affair. She must have summoned enough calories of courage probably because she couldn’t hold the guilt anymore.

In response to the man’s challenge, the columnist scolded him for indulging in such a risky fact finding game in the first place and like you would expect, he was advised to move on. Well, when you critically consider the effort and investment that relationship consumes, and the contagious effect of divorce on the children and others. ‘To move on’ becomes quite a handy response.

That you love one another doesn’t really guarantee all the happiness, the feel good feeling will die and probably resurrect again. The long married says it takes a whole lot of conscious effort from both parties to keep it alive. In fact, that readiness to harness hard work and conscious effort to make things work is what they refer to as love.

There is so much to great relationship than love.

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Lanre Olagunju blogs at www.larigold.blogspot.com and tweets from @Lanre_Olagunju

 

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