A few days ago I was reading the news and came across the following article:
You can read the full article here. If you choose not to read the full article I’ll give you a brief summary of what it contains. If you have read it then feel free to skip the next paragraph.
A study carried out be researchers at Oxford University involving more than 500 participants, aged 18 or over, found that as we enter into a romantic relationship we do so at the cost of losing a few of our intimate friends. These friends are those who we would go to ‘at moments of crisis’. When we are in a fresh new relationship our support network can becomes smaller as we no longer spend as much quality time with those people that are close in our lives.
This topic of ‘love’ has been on my mind all summer. Love is a great thing, something the world really needs nowadays and we all know of it’s good aspects. But I’m going to look at it from the butt end and analyse some of the negative things or problems it can lead to.
Blind love or a blind you?
A few days after the beginning of Ramadhan I popped onto MySpace early in the morning just to check if I had any new messages or other notifications. It was 5.00 am so I wasn’t planning on staying for too long. In my inbox there was a message from a friend I had not spoken to for a good few months: “I could really do with talking to someone like you right now.” That’s all it said. It was sent just 5 minutes before so I signed onto MySpace chat to see if the person was online. She was. Turned out she was on holiday in Mexico visiting family and while there something had happened which upset her boyfriend back home here in England. No matter how many times she apologised and begged him to forgive her, she would still end up crying herself to sleep at night because of the hateful things he said. Another friend was madly in love with a guy who returned her love by calling her hurtful names and giving her nothing but grief. But being so head over heels in love she was just accepting it all; wiping away the tears of today hoping tomorrow would be better. Why the hell are you letting yourself be hurt so much?
People say love is blind but after thinking about it a bit and observing others in love, I’ve come to realise actually it’s not love which is blind. It will make YOU blind. Love is a good thing and being in love is great too. But some people are so obsessed by the whole thing to such an extent that they allow themselves to be used and trodden over repeatedly day after day and still cling onto the old memories of the way things were. Even when the other person obviously doesn’t ‘care’ any more and doesn’t ‘love’ them any more, they are unwilling to let go. Lying, cheating, breaking promises are all signs that maybe things have reached their end.
I guess you have to find out whether the happiness you derive from a relationship outweighs the trouble or tears it brings you. In some relationships you observe that one person spends their days in tears, in hurt and in sorrow and this has been going on for a very long time. It is those people especially who need to ask themselves whether the pains they face every day are worth it. When it comes to that stage, I think there are 2 choices. Firstly you can either keep going, hoping that things will get better. But how long will you wait? From what you can tell, it seems like the hurt isn’t going stop any time soon. The other choice I think, and most favourable one is letting go and saving yourself from a ship that has already started sinking and from which the other person took the lifeboat. Yes it’ll hurt too, but at least this time it wont be constant. At least this way the pain will lessen day by day and you can actually deal with it without having crap thrown at you all the time.
When you ask someone why they’re in a relationship from which the love and happiness has died, they either say, ‘because I love them’ or ‘I dunno.’ That’s when you know love has clouded their vision and is stopping them from seeing the pain they are allowing others to inflict on them. Like my lovely friend said, it can sometimes be insecurity and fear of being lonely. If you asked me, I’d rather be single and happy, than in a ‘relationship’ that would give me grey hair.
Nothing’s free, not even love
Back to the topic of the article that I have included above. Professor Dunbar, one of the members of the team that carried out this study says:
“The intimacy of a relationship – your emotional engagement with it – correlates very tightly with the frequency of your interactions with those individuals. If you don’t see people, the emotional engagement starts to drop off, and quickly.”
I think he’s got a very valid point. In our happiness of a new love, we spend so much time with them that sometimes we forget all those other people who were with us before. Those people, that helped us up every time we fell. Those people who we would run to in our times of need. It’s a big slap in the face to them when you no longer reply to their messages and texts or have time to go out with them or in some cases even have time to listen to them. Though people rarely ever say it out loud, but trust me they sure do feel it. And slowly slowly you begin to drift apart. It sucks.
I was discussing this with one of my friends yesterday and she said:
“Yes. It sure does. But in a way you can’t really blame anyone, it just happens yano.”
I agree with her completely. It isn’t really anyone’s fault as such but isn’t it a bit of a high price to pay for something that may not even last a week? And when it does screw-up, you’ve just lost yourself a friend who you would go to in such a situation. But it’s always avoidable right? You just have to play your cards right.
But then again, you may ask, you’ve never loved, how would you know? Question is, have I?
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