Love is not about bigger and better or even finding the perfect match but about growing together, transforming, and sharing life experiences as a couple.
The Forty Rules of Love
Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.
~ The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi
As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air. Whether anticipating a romantic evening with a loved one or pining for an ideal mate, you cannot escape the messages flooding your social media feeds about the perfect date, the best gift or the most thoughtful way to woo your beloved.
As a pragmatist (not a cynic), I have always been a bit wary of the advertising industry that cleverly guides consumer tastes and sets benchmarks for behaviors and the values we associate with certain actions.
Planning to get engaged? Must buy a diamond ring.
Impressing people on Instagram? Splurge on a fabulous holiday location.
Keeping up with the Joneses? Bigger is definitely better.
The Stories Big Media Won’t Tell
38 years of authentic voices, fresh perspectives daily. Subscribe now for free and never miss a story that everyone’s talking about! 📰
This one size fits all approach to life, particularly for the part of your personal life that you want to share with the world, has always struck me as odd. What happened to originality? How about honoring the uniqueness of each person, each relationship?
Love is a universal emotion yet each one of us experiences it differently.
Speaking the language of love
In the popular and oft-quoted book, The Five Love Languages, author Gary Chapman describes the five emotional love languages – words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. The premise that knowing each other’s love language helps couples communicate their feelings in a way that matters to their partners and strengthens their relationship makes sense.
The tough part is figuring out your own and your partner’s love language. While there may be quizzes and surveys that provide some guidance, I personally find myself swaying between the five defined languages and sometimes jumping between them. My fluency in any particular language seems limited which makes using it in everyday life quite frustrating. I shudder to think how my husband tackles it (I know the answer, he doesn’t really think about these things despite me cheekily passing the book to him after reading it).
At times I think I’m multilingual when it comes to the love languages, deploying the equivalent of a phrase or two from each of them. For a long time I assumed my love language was ‘acts of service’. I appreciated the time and effort spent in doing ordinary things that often don’t add up to anything spectacular to post on social media – laundry, dishes, paying the bills on time. But I am not so sure now. I know I appreciated these dependable behaviors that my parents demonstrated towards each other and their children, perhaps I borrowed my preferred love language from them.
Sometimes I crave words of affirmation, not when I am riding high and expect praise but more so when I am down, confused, or in a bind. Hearing the right words of support or offering to take on some of my load while letting me sort things out have been the high points of my marriage, not the expensive meals in fancy restaurants on birthdays and anniversaries, despite the latter being more photo worthy. Yet, I equally appreciate thoughtful gifts, and caring gestures that follow from spending quality time with my spouse.
Are actions more important?
“There is no love; there are only proofs of love. Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my action.” This quote, attributed to Pierre Reverdy, is one of my favorite ones on the topic of love. I even used it for the ‘mother of the bride’ speech at my daughter’s wedding.
Why?
Love, when we finally look at it closely, is an abstract emotion; like peace or faith. How do we know that someone loves us? Is it through beautiful poems, catchy songs and heartfelt declarations? Are words enough to convey the depth of the emotion?
Actions, as they say, do speak louder than words. And I find this to be true of the most loving relationships that I have observed. The spouse who puts up with his wife’s tendency to adopt stray cats in spite of his own his own aversion to pets, the brother who stays beside his distraught sister as she grapples with exam stress, the friend who brings over your favorite snack to get you through your anxiety over your new job, these are actions that are indeed proofs of love.
There are no rules for love
“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.”
In Elif Shafak’s bestselling novel, The Forty Rules of Love, the primary love story is not a romantic one between man and woman, but between the poet Rumi and his Sufi master, Shams of Tabriz. Through two parallel tracks, one of which is based in the contemporary world, Shafak lights up the potential for and the path to transformation that is made possible through love.
While I may shy away from outward declarations of love as perpetuated by businesses and social media influencers, I still believe that seeking love is a worthwhile endeavor. While a part of me may consider finding a perfect match, or someone to complete us as foolish myths, there is no doubt that love drives our search even as it seems to be our destination. It is the possibility of experiencing, accepting and ultimately, transforming ourselves through love, that makes it so popular across countries, cultures and centuries.
So, whether or not you are looking for love this February, I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day weekend.