Fr Jim Cogley
An eight-year old girl was asked by her teacher what she thought that love was? She replied, ‘It’s the first feeling that you feel, before the bad stuff starts getting in the way.’ The bad stuff will inevitably get in the way, but the healthier the relationship, and the more mature is the level of communication, the more it can ultimately bring a couple closer together. The wounds caused by relationships can only be healed in relationship, so it is a given that a couple must fall out of love with each having to face up to their own issues. In relationship two people always act as mirrors where they will see in each other what they are blind to in themselves, both good and not so good. These are the hidden dynamics that are always in play and unfortunately so many fail to see how their past is affecting their present and also eroding their future until it is faced up to and discussed openly.
There can be no denying the tremendous power and beauty of romantic love. It may not keep the world going round but it certainly keeps it from stopping! Yet all the evidence of history is that it can so easily turn into tragedy and isolation. Could it be that the sheer intensity of falling in love is itself an indication of our previous loneliness and self-alienation? As such romantic love can act like a drug to which many become addicted to, but like all drugs its effects wear off and the deeper we have fallen, the harder it is to climb out. In the initial stages of a relationship it is easy to say ‘I love you’ but in effect, since I don’t know you yet’, this can only mean ‘I love you for how you make me feel’. Then slowly the real issue becomes, do I still love you when you don’t make me feel good and when all I can see is the not so pleasant shadow side of your personality? Do I love for love's sake? Or, in the words of St Augustine, am I in love with falling in love?
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