WHEN LOVE is NOT

When Valentine's Day is in the air, and everywhere you look are lacy, pink and red symbols of love. Love and romance parade around like Siamese twins joined at the hips for life. This love is that romantic glow that comes over you when you are suddenly struck by cupid's arrow. It is the ultimate high. Every media is buried in a pink cloud of romantic notions that many individuals are willing to swallow, if not purchase at a stiff price. Ah, yes, love is nice.

Venus, the goddess of love brings spring blossoms and vines. She is the Roman goddess that celebrates love as an intoxicating wine. The Greeks called her Aphrodite, the mother of Eros who wedded Psyche. Aphrodite gave Psyche four tasks to complete before this union could be possible. It was in completing these four seemingly impossible tasks that Psyche is transformed. A young woman, who is only capable of loving herself, and her romantic notions, becomes a mature woman capable to real love. It is a reminder that young romantic notions are not true love. Love is a decision not a fuzzy feeling. We must grow through great effort, and integrate what we learn before we are capable of true love. Ah, but the second story doesn't sell as well as the first.

Perhaps the four impossible tasks that Psyche had to overcome were: commitment, caring, compassion, and consciousness. Until we are capable of these we will fail in our relationships. These are the ingredients necessary for real love to take place. Marriage is the merger of two complete souls. If one member of the contract is deficit the merger can only stand on the short leg.

From the Latin root of Venus we also get: wish, winsome and venerate. These are roots to romantic love. We desire, and we place this object of our desire on a pedestal from which they are certain to fall. We may do this several times, or spend a lifetime, before we realize that this is not love at all. When we are wishing, we have not accomplished the skills we need for a real union; we are only focused on wanting a pleasant experience to lift us from our own darkness.

Some media would have us believe that we can short cut this process. We can purchase it for a price and need not be chiseled into the end product; we can circumvent the pain of growth and just bask in the intoxication of romance. Perhaps that is why the divorce rate is so high. Everyone wants the fairy tale but doesn't want to do the work it takes for happily ever after. With discipline we learn to delay gratification for the larger goal. Romance on the dance floor may require a different partner each week. As long as there are romantic fools the world will tango.

Real love takes time. We value things in our live by the time and effort we place into them. Cupid's arrow, and a few glasses of wine, is little effort for a union that should last a lifetime. The first time this individual falls from the pedestal we are likely to search for a new companion. It is even less likely that the next companion will be real love.

We must first establish a relationship with ourselves before we are capable to love another human being. We must be able to discipline ourselves before we attempt to discipline those around us. The over indulgent parent is not loving, neither is the over protective. We learn from pain. If we try to short cut others or ourselves and spare the pain we also shortcut the growth.

When we plant a seed, we may be more loving, because we have less winsome about our own gratification. Giving gratifies true love. We till the soil, work at watering, and keeping the conditions right. We place it in the light and then turn the results over to God because without his Divine Intervention nothing can grow. Then we wait. When the time is right and if the season is right, we may get a blossom.

We are much like that seed. The seed has its most rapid growth in the dark, but without that period of time it would not produce blossoms or fruit. Without the growth we cannot have real love. For when we cut the blossoms from the vine they quickly loose their sweet perfume and wither away. True love is very rooted in hard work.