RELATING WITH LOVE
November 1999
By Rajgopal Nidamboor
Love is emotion in motion, evolving consistently into higher forms. The moment a relationship fathoms this evolutionary principle, it becomes a relationship for life
‘For ever it was, and ever shall befall/That Love is he that all thing may bind,’ wrote Geoffrey Chaucer with his marvelous medieval twang. You’d doff your hat for that, albeit there’s nothing really esoteric to it. Love is something that just happens to us.
Remember your first crush: how you were swept off your feet and were in complete ecstasy? So much so that you never argue with the extraordinary formula. On the contrary, you’d always wish to add novel ways of thinking about love per se.
Love is more than an activity, the only light, as philosopher J. Krishnamurti called it. It’s also, in essence, emotion in motion. Which explains why there are multiple definitions of love, why they coexist in harmony, and why each person chooses the definition that suits him/her best at any given time. You would also notice how these denotations—including responses from your beloved—change with circumstances such as time.
According to Patricia H. Taylor, a noted counselor and relationships researcher and author of The Enchantment of Opposites(Traveling Artists Press, USA), love encompasses an attachment where people are actively and continually creating their experiences. They are thinking of themselves and their partners as refreshing, interesting and lovable persons to be with. In the process, couples consciously decide to be the kind of people who often explore what they want and how they wish to connect. They affirm to communicate with each other about roles and rules. The bottomline, according to Patricia, is that couples must become increasingly willing to write, and even rewrite, their rules of relating on an ‘as-needed’ basis.
Just ask anyone to list qualities necessary for a great relationship and you will be flooded with a host of commonplace answers—vitality, frolic, spontaneity, more than just conjugal bliss, meeting of the minds, mutual cheering club, soul mate, warm family life. The list is endless. You could add on a few more, if you like.
But the point is that the reasons for a relationship change over time. Which also explains why our representative list encases most of the sought-after qualities and roles for our times. That’s not all. These are also qualities that successful couples tell others to embody.
Simple? Not really, because it needs a man and a woman to play the first partnership game—a pledge that allows us to explore and discover who among us is attuned to the psychical chemistry of the opposite gender. This is also a primary reason why a marriage of these differences creates a lasting alliance—notwithstanding a few ‘jerks’ that may take place during the course of any relationship.
Patricia places the idea thus: ‘Men and women bring their own special skills, desires, and differences to the partnership.’
Perfection, says Patricia, ‘is a starting point, a state of being that exists already’.
The best way to find someone you want to be with forever, she adds, is to become that person yourself. Put simply, this means you have to imbibe the qualities you seek in others. Then, and only then, will you be able to attract a like-minded person. The golden rule, Patricia elaborates, is to believe that no matter how good our lives are, they can always get much better than most of us ever dare to imagine.
Add to that the importance of treating each other like successful singles on a date for life, and you have a truly great relationship in front of you—one that has come to stay. Such a relationship not only complements the feeling that you and your partner are doing the best you can every minute, but also works as a magical potion to develop security. It loves and receives love.
Great relationships don’t contradict individual rules. It does not matter whether we are really biologically different. Indeed, our identities as male and female are not just anatomical interpretations but also culturally distinct. So, there it is!
Any great relationship needs to be personalized with an element of natural design, and more than a prospect of an attached sense of detachment. To find that ‘space’—both within and without. To recognize how willing you are to start creating the relationship you want, how inclined you are to become the type of person who is deeply desired, what actions you can take now to start making yourself, and your partner, even more alluring. Great relationships also evolve in the mind. Even strings, as philosopher Marsilio Ficino extolled, seem to respond to strings that are similarly tuned, and one lyre resounds in answer to another, or a solid wall would echo to one who calls.
Love is something like the two sparrows flying outside your window, accelerating in an instant into an ascending, intertwined spiral of their ‘enchantment of opposites’ jig. It’s also a fine symmetry of the spirit. One that denotes life as a relationship, the most vibrant, beautiful, and mystical framework of this universe—with love per se being its essential and most basic principle.