I don't mean to do my responses to Lady Lola's posts as antagonistic ("Oh, so you think THAT'S what love is about? I'll show you!"), but it's very interesting to me how we both identify as feminists who have (mostly) had romantic relationships with men and yet our ideas about some very basic concepts are worlds apart. And so, the Sheriff's take on love.
I've been in several relationships where I've dropped the "L" bomb, and all of them have been wildly different. But the one common thread I've found is that the desire to put another person wholly before your own well-being is not love, at least not to me. With Beefcake, the last six months of our relationship were awful because I was so sick with my eating disorder, I relied entirely on him for my emotional well-being. I would've sacrificed nearly anything to keep him in my life, and eventually did in the form of lower self-esteem, evaporated self-confidence, the loss of self-respect and social isolation (factors I blame on the anorexia taking over my brain, not his desires). And I wound up losing him in the end anyway, because no one who really cares for you wants you to give up that much of yourself.
Sacrifice smacks to me of unhealthy relationships. You can only resent someone if there is not mutuality in the sacrifice. If you move across the country to a city where you have no friends to take a mediocre job to be with a loved one while they pursue their dreams, this will not help your relationship. It will slit its throat. You will be overly reliant on them, you will suffocate them, you will resent them deeply, you will probably cheat (or want to).
But to me, love means that person truly wanting what's best for you. It might mean bending your plans to accommodate them in your life, but certainly not to the extent that you would be unhappy or lonely or unfulfilled (and not more than they will for you). It means encouraging and bringing out the best in each other, even if that means that they've got to let you pursue your own goals halfway across the world. It means a partnership
Or so I think. What about you, dear readers?
Much love,
The Albright Sheriff
I like that our ideas are worlds apart because I think it shows diversity in feminism! I think that the worst thing someone has said to me about feminists is "whatever, you all think alike anyway." So, it's good that we don't.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to clarify that the sacrifice should be mutual. Unfortunately, usually it's not. I just knew that I was truly in love when me, the uber-feminist, highly-driven, goal-oriented, control-freak woman that I am, took someone else's life into consideration when thinking about my plans. My thought process became "If he can't fit into this, is it worth losing him?" Since it didn't happen, I don't know the answer to those questions, but the fact is I still thought about it.
Lady Lola
Thanks for inspiring me to think about what love actually means. I probably hadn't put this much thought into it since I was in high school. This is my conclusion so far in regards to sacrifice: love can lead you to make sacrifices, but just because you love someone that does not mean you will sacrifice anything and everything for them, and just because you sacrifice something major it doesn't mean you actually love the person.
ReplyDeleteMy partner is making a pretty big sacrifice for me/us in a few months: moving halfway across the US, and giving up a good job and proximity to family and friends, because I'm going back to school in the fall. I say "me/us" because it's not as if I said, "Well I'm moving and you can either come with me or we can break up," but, rather, we talked about it over the course of the time I was applying to programs and came to the conclusion that it's just what needs to happen in order for us to be happy. We make each other happy, and we both have enough relationship experience behind us to know the difference between true happiness and "Wow this person rocks my socks" or "Hey, we don't fight, therefore we're happy, right?" or "This person's so great I want to hitch my star to hir wagon." We're better together than either of us is individually. We make important decisions with the other person's happiness in mind, but we don't put it above our own.
Learning about polyamory has greatly altered the way I think about love. I don't believe in soul mates, or the ability to be everything another person needs (or to have my needs totally fulfilled by one other person). When I try to define love I come back to the way I feel about my best friends, and my sister, and other people who have been really important to me even though I haven't had a sexual or romantic relationship with them. I can't say that the love I feel for my partner is at its core different than those loves, only that they each satisfy different needs that I have.