When you love someone, you deify him. To what degree is relative to the extent of your passion. Nevertheless, to you he becomes a god, giving him the power to lord it over you should he so choose. For the most part, a good man wouldn’t – at least, not consciously or maliciously. But almost inevitably, he will, as men are wont to do upon attaining the esteemed status of pseudo-godship – all because he is loved.
How does one deify a mere mortal? One builds him up; first in one’s head, then in the heads of all and sundry who care to listen. And though the latter might not embrace such worship with even half the same ardor that you devote to it, you do. You only see the good that evokes your passion, and never the bad that could actually make you see sense. And what a folly that is because that is where your downfall begins.
When you love someone, you strive to become compatible. And because you’ve been told that you can never change your lover, you endeavor to change yourself. Indeed, there is no harm in such a cause, especially if it is for the good of, not just your love, but of yourself. And so you find yourself giving up this and sacrificing that until one day you wake up and you don’t know yourself anymore. You don’t know what you’ve become, how you got there, or even why; all because such a drastic overhaul of your “self”, of your “being” was achieved for the wrong reasons: not for yourself, but for the pseudo-god who you so desperately wanted to please, but who, more than likely, would never ever be pleased.
Nothing is more guaranteed to wake you up out of your rose-colored stupor than a stranger looking back at you in the mirror, and you start to realize that if you were so wrong about yourself, then perhaps you were also wrong about the lover you have come to hold in such high regard. And then you look back and realize that the pseudo-god isn’t quite as divine as you thought. You start to grasp the magnitude of his indifference – the indifference that was always there the entire time, but you deemed it natural in his seeming superiority to you; a superiority, I might add, that you bestowed upon him in the first place. You start to see the disregard, the disrespect, the dishonesty, and all other manner of painful truths that only the most honest of relationships can discern. You see them all, and suddenly you’re disillusioned and jaded, and you don’t know what to make of it.
Still, when you love someone, you try to make it work. So every time there’s a problem (and at this point, you’re already honest with yourself enough to admit that there are indeed problems), you find yourself conceding to keep the peace, to keep the status quo intact. This is because even though in your eyes he is now just a man and no longer a pseudo-god, you still do not love him any less. If anything, you might even love him more in this newfound attainability.
So you concede, and all is peaceful until the next conflict when you will concede again and again and again in a never ending cycle of concession for the sake of love and harmony, regardless of who is in the wrong. But when you really think about it, how long can you concede? How long can you give in? How long can you keep apologizing for wrongs that you did not do? Everything – and everyone – has a limit. Surely your ability to concede is no exception.
So now you’re faced with a dilemma. If you continue to concede until every drop of concession is wrung from your body and until every smidgen of apology is no more, the time will come when you’ll have nothing more to give. Inevitably, you can do no more than watch the demise of the relationship that you so painstakingly built.
On the other hand, you can resist taking the path of least resistance and fight for what you believe is right. You can attempt to make him face his inadequacies, instead of mollycoddling him and pointing out your own to make him feel good about himself. You can endeavor to put your lover in his place when he’s done you wrong, and force him into submission for you to finally receive the apology or the appreciation that you so deserve. This is risky because though there is a slight chance that you will accomplish your objective, it is exactly that – slight – and you may invariably do more harm than good, leading to an even earlier demise of the relationship. Is there even a path that doesn’t lead to the relationship’s demise? I do not believe so, for even those who stay together for the rest of their lives eventually die and become no more.
When you love someone, you give him the power to destroy you. And until you start to accept love as it is – fleeting – you will find yourself constantly destroyed throughout your lifetime. You will only emerge whole when you stop believing in forever and start accepting that nothing lasts forever.
Indeed, when you love someone, make every moment count because that’s all you’re ever really going to get – moments.
Note: This was inspired by the movie ‘Becoming Jane’, an adaptation of the life of Jane Austen; hence, the slightly Victorian undertone (I imagine).
