Saturday, 14 January 2012

Love is Not a Feeling but a Decision

After my marriage failed, I took to my own therapy - writing my thoughts and feelings down.  I started my first writing on 17/09/2010 expressing my view on the word/feeling about Love.  I titled it Love is Not a Feeling but a Decision.  It is how I feel about Love, how I wish my ex-husband viewed love...


When you Google LOVE, there are so many websites/advice on LOVE. I used to be one of those LOVE seekers until I got married. It was then I discovered LOVE is not a feeling but is a decision. Attraction/lust is a feeling but it is definitely not the good foundation for LOVE. Love is when one can look beyond the lust/attraction feeling and make a CONSCIOUS decision to accept the other party for his/her entirety.
Those Mills and Boons books describing the heart palpitation are just temporary and initial feelings when you meet someone. As you get to know a person, it is then you make the decision whether to fall IN LOVE with the person. Similarly, a divorce is also a decision to fall OUT OF LOVE with the person. It's not the other party has changed but you yourself has DECIDED not to accept the person for his/her flaws. When lust was in place, the flaws are often pushed aside but as stability or should I say monotonous sets in, the flaws starts surfacing. Usually the party the make the conscious decision to fall OUT OF love will find excuses for his/her conscience that things have changed or the other party has changed. But in all honesty, the person that decides to fall OUT OF LOVE, could not face up to the fact that he/she has make that conscious decision to do so and it has nothing to do with the other party.
Many people try to find love and said that they couldn't. It is because all of us have set our own criteria for LOVE. Some of us wants a Tall, Dark, Handsome man, Singaporean set the 5C's criteria, men wants women with big boobs/bum etc. But did any of us prepare ourselves what happens when this criteria disappears after a while? What do we do when our Tall, Dark, Handsome man become a couch potato with pot belly, our 5C man loses his job, our big boobs woman has a mastectomy? Do we then make the conscious decision to fall OUT OF LOVE and initiate a divorce based on irreconcilable differences?
We envy those who celebrate their golden/diamond anniversary but if we talk to this people, you will find that it's their decision to stay together. No doubt, I know that there are many people who also decide to stay together for the sake of their children but they are not happy together. But whatever it is, it is still a decision - to fall in love, to fall out of love, to stay together but remain unhappy. It's all a choice - A DECISION. So to those who cant find love, maybe it is your decision not to, to those facing a divorce, it is also a decision either from you or your partner and to those happily married for 50 years, it is also your decision to make the best of what you have chosen. What I am saying is by all means you these websites to widen your circle, to know more people, to increase your choices but if these websites promised to find you love, then think twice. It is your own decision to love or not to love, no one can give you the shortcut and the secret to finding love.

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