Love: Crazy or Reasonable
a friend of mine posted this on a site, but then either private-ed it removed it entirely, but I found it conversation worthy, so I’ve posted it here(anonymously) and added my thoughts.
“how can you tell if you really love someone, or if that someone just happens to be in the right place at the right time and just happens to fill some emotional void in your life? is there a difference? the hopeless romantic inside of me says, of course there's a difference. my pragmatic side, however, begs to differ.”
First, what characterizes love? I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation, but I would throw out these words: concern, respect, attraction, devotion, interest, importance, affection, selflessness. The fuzzy feelings without respect etc. is just a crush, it won’t survive the long times. The reverse will take too much work to maintain because you won’t be excited to do be with him/her. It has to be both, the excited butterflies and the unwavering commitment.
To get back to a reply, is the emotional void a temporary thing or a more permanent part of one’s personality? If it is just temporary, than I would say clearly it is not love. But the more serious point is when it is more integral to your personality.
We are not perfect beings. We’ll have things we carry with us for many years, good or bad. We’ll lay some down, and pick up others. Our “emotional voids” are part of us. A Christian will seek God for all things, including their voids. But, still, none of us are perfect.
So, what if part of our attraction of our love is from the void they are filling? Does it still not serve that part of the equation. Will they still not make you want to be with them? Won’t your attraction for them be based on the interaction of some characteristic of yourself juxtaposed with one of theirs? Your imperfections can fit each other “perfectly”. Let me be careful with this, and point out that any kind of emotional imperfection can be just a quirk, or seriously dangerous.
Love is hard to find, folks, in case you haven’t figured that out. If you can seriously find all of those kind of qualities in your relationship(or whatever your list looks like)-not a flash in the pan, not an exchange of back-scratching-shout it out. Praise God, and be faithful. (And only that last statement is a ‘current status’ kind of thing for me.)