What's love got to do with it?

Origianally published in Feb 2007

Valentines day gets me to thinking about Human relationships and what they're all about. And it seems to me to be a very strange sphere of Human experience and one I don't fully understand. I don't understand why people are willing to become so involved with another person, as to do so guarantees that at some point you are going to get very hurt. People fall out and break each other's hearts, love turns to hate and people do all they can to cause as much damage as they can to those they once would have protected with their lives. People become incapacitated by injury or illness and their significant other's life is spent caring for them. If a couple has children there's even more scope for hurt: children are clumsy idiots who are always falling into lawn mowers or picking up all sorts of bad habits. Even if a couple were to have a successful marriage and perfect children the day will come when one of them will die and leave the other in grief and mourning. Sooner or later someone will get hurt. It would appear that the only way to avoid such pain in your life is to either abstain from getting involved with other people at all or make sure you die before your loved one(s).

It seems to me that the whole thing can be boiled down to a simple process. Next time you're getting your bra straps twanged or nursing an unwanted erection during a maths lesson just remember that it's all to do with the survival of the species. The logical conclusion to dating and courtship, marriage and family life is having children. And there's even more pain if a couple discovers that for whatever reason they can't have children. If you look round the animal kingdom you'll see that there are animals that have monogamous life long partnerships, but many more manage to procreate without such emotional attachments or high degree of social contact, so why do we willingly put ourselves through such hassle and torment if there's an alternative?

Is there an alternative? We need to continue to think in practical anthropological terms for the moment to prove the need for the emotions. When 2 people come together and form a partnership they gain strength from each other and are able to support each other through whatever life throws at them. This is a really important factor. If we look through the animal kingdom we see that most animals' parenting is done over a relatively short period – none at all in the case of most fish up to maybe a couple of years for some other animals. For us it's around 20 years before we reach adulthood and independence from our parents. The bringing up of children is a very demanding task and much easier for two parents. That's not to say that single parents don't make good parents, simply that it's never an easy option. Our children are so demanding on us that virtually alone in the animal kingdom we enlist the help of Grandparents to help us raise our offspring.

Extending our thoughts beyond the nuclear family we observe that we are a social animal. We make emotional bonds with many others outside our family. We have friendships, join clubs and have allegiances and loyalties. We love not just our life partner, but many people. We become bonded to many things – football teams, pubs, bands, charitable organisations and causes. These bonds make us want the best for whatever it is we're bonded to and other people involved with it and we alter different factors of our lifestyle for the mutual benefit of ourselves and our cause. Where our lives overlap with other people's lives and their lives overlap with others beyond our joint interest we create a whole network of friendships and a fellowship in which we all play a part and abide by (a bit like MySpace!).

And there we have a microcosm of society. The ripples of a community of people who out of regard for their fellows co-operate and respect each other's boundaries can echo outwards and be amplified many times over until we encapsulate the whole of humankind. On this large scale we can see where these bonds of love work and where they break down as well as the repercussions of both. Without making these bonds and living by them individually we would struggle and society would disintegrate into every man for himself.

So we can see that a healthy society is one where the bond of love between people is the governing factor. The more the rule of law has to be used to set boundaries and dictate morality the unhealthier that society is. It is up to us as individuals to decide our place in society – whether we respect or reject those around us.

This picture of society is a reflection of our interaction with God. Religion teaches us that God is Love. The bible says that, "We love because God first loved us," and that love has been demonstrated by the death and resurrection of Jesus. We need to decide if we believe that God is real and then make another decision; about what we do with that knowledge. We can ignore it and do our own thing; we can obey what we see as God's will because we think we have no choice or we can choose to willingly forge bonds and seek friendship with God.

So is this then a definition of love? An emotional bond between people voluntarily given which brings forth feelings of loyalty, protectiveness, passion, pleasure and general goodwill. Sometimes that love is reciprocated sometimes it is not. Sometimes that love is deserved, sometimes not.

What can we conclude about Love and the part it plays in Human life? We have to conclude that it is a totally normal and necessary experience. That we Humans need to forge deep emotional bonds with people close to us, and that to not do so makes us half a person. To find someone who becomes a life partner is a true blessing.

Find someone who has lost a partner and ask them a question. Ask them if they had the choice would they share again the time they had with their partner and go through the pain of loss, or not have the pain of loss but forfeit their relationship with their loved one.