1536 I Don't Love You Anymore

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

[Apologies for using "they", plural, instead of "he or she", singular. Just trading one awkward construction for another slightly less awkward.]

I didn't change the channel after the noon news, so a soap opera was on. I don't watch soap operas, so I don't know which one this is, but it's the one with Greely, or Greenlee, or whatever her name is, and I overheard a woman on the show say to a man, "I don't love you anymore."

I've never understood that statement. If it's the same person, and you "don't love anymore", then it couldn't have been love in the first place.

I figure that if you get to see deeply enough into another person to love them (a romantic interest, a family member, a friend), then you love them forever. Love isn't a momentary or conditional thing. As long as what you saw and loved exists, then how can you not love that part? They may do something that distresses or hurts you, but if you know the person well enough to love them, the basic them, then you can understand and forgive, and keep on loving.

Of course, there's the case where you never really knew the person at all, and what you loved was a construct, a facade, and when you find the real person they're entirely different.

I suspect that sometimes people confuse "want" and "love". They want someone, want them in their life, and think that therefore they love them, so then when they don't want anymore, they think they don't love anymore.

Or maybe they do love someone, but when they figure out that they really aren't good for each other, or that they can't possibly live together or be too involved in each other's lives (and that happens a LOT), when they don't "want" them anymore, then they can't love them, either.

Well, you can. You should. You need to keep the good, and continue to love it, if perhaps from a distance.

I know someone who is having a problem with that now. Her father has been ill a lot lately, and it has affected his mind and personality, and not in a good way. He'd always been difficult to know, difficult to deal with, and now he's become more self-centered, annoying, and frustrating than ever. She is afraid she's losing charitable feeling toward him. She gets angry with him, and would like to just walk away, and then she gets angrier because he's causing her to feel this way.

I was very lucky with Jay. Even with half his brain gone, delusions and hallucinations, unreasonable demands and frustrating stubbornness, the core of him remained him, all the himness that I loved, and it was easy to continue to love him.

I don't know what to tell my friend.
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