Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Waiting For Love

When it comes to finding a life partner, a lot of people are waiting: waiting for the right person to come along, waiting for the timing to be right. The assumption is that when the right person comes along and the timing is right, all we have to do is enjoy being in love. And that we know we have found the right person when being together is "easy" and doesn't ask much of us. The truth of the matter is that love is serious work and we must take it very seriously. Psychologist Erich Fromm, a luminary on the topic of love, said that love "requires knowledge and effort." In his masterpiece The Art of Loving, he says that love "requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice." He likens love to an art or skill. Like any art or skill, we must put work in preparing ourselves before the time comes to perform. This means we must prepare ourselves for love before we find our partner. This preparation includes putting time and effort into truly understanding ourselves, learning what it really means to love, studying what makes for effective and ineffective communication in a relationship, and understanding what real love looks like and feels like (I would also add reading The Art of Loving to this list). This also means that we need to continue to work on love after we have found our partner. We cannot just sit back thinking the rest will work itself out and we will live happily ever after. We must continue our loving work, which includes working with our partner on strengthening the relationship, putting effort into working through any problems or challenges in the relationship, and continuing to practice and develop our capacity to love. It is only through hard work, dedication and effort that we can have that fairy tale ending.

2 comments:

  1. I love it! Thank you Dr.Holakouee. I would like to read more on this topic of love and relationships.

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  2. Thank you! Yes this is definitely a topic I will be writing more about in future posts!

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