Love is free

Love is free; it knows no schedule, no age limits, and it doesn’t hurt. If it hurt, it wouldn’t be love—it would be something else. Anything but love.

The dilemma with this whole love thing is that there’s no manual that tells you how to live it, feel it, or express it. According to the Greeks, there are three types of love (agape, philia, and eros). Here I’m going to focus on eros—that kind of love that’s supposed to be directed toward someone else and isn’t familial. That love we express or feel toward our partner.

Everything in our society has come to be governed by standards we must meet in order to fit into that society. If we don’t meet them, we run the risk of being seen as oddballs.

If something doesn’t fit into the categories of “good” or “bad,” it’s considered strange. Well, the standards I mentioned earlier are usually followed so that what we do and say can fall into the category of “good” or even “normal.”

If something isn’t normal but isn’t bad either, it’s most likely abnormal. Who sets all these standards? Who gets to decide what’s good, bad, normal, or abnormal?

Viewing people as objects is normal; treasuring them as if they were a high-denomination bill is okay; failing to reciprocate with a gift or gesture on your one-month anniversary is wrong; love between two people of the same sex is abnormal.

We’re constantly being judged by our actions, by what we say, by who our partner is, and by how we show our affection. Not feeling jealous isn’t right, but feeling overly jealous and crossing the line into possessiveness isn’t right either. What’s the exact measure for loving and being accepted?

I’ll say it again: there’s no manual that tells you how to love, how to show affection, or how to have sex (there’s the Kama Sutra, but it’s not the law—it’s more like a book of recommendations). What’s the right measure for love?

I think what we need to do is break the mold. Set aside the standards and be happy with whoever we want, however we want.

Preferring someone over others for certain things is already a form of expression (though not necessarily of love). Wanting to give the best of ourselves to that same person already involves a level of sacrifice. But choosing freedom under the same conditions I mentioned earlier—and having that person reciprocate that freedom with the same generosity I’ve described—goes beyond anything conventional.

No one belongs to anyone else. No one can force us to do anything we don’t want to do or to give what we have without any limits; for me, that is pure love—everything else is just an added bonus. The bare minimum needed for mutual happiness is an acceptable level of emotional stability.

I say we must love in such a way that happiness is mutual and without trying to please anyone else; if not, why have a partner at all?