The perfect love environment has been proven to require the following elements – fun, food and finance to thrive. Today, we want to deal with the fourth factor and it is WORK, HARDWORK. One cardinal reason why love fails is the sheer fact that we often underestimate what it takes for it to work. Is there anyone here who, planning to build a new house, doesn’t first sit down and figure the cost so you’ll know if you can complete it? Most love towers we build crumbles with disappointment because the cost of building such a lofty thing was not properly estimated.This work element in love is what we want to deal with today. It is apparent that the creator gave the first lovers the responsibility of keeping and dressing their love garden. The fact is that it is never the creator’s responsibility to make our love gardens work, the wonderful outcomes of our relationships lie in our very own hands. Irresponsibility is transferring our personal responsibilities to an entity who has afore-delegated those responsibilities to us. So the creator might provide opportunities for us to love, but it is our personal responsibility to maximize those opportunities.
The first fact is that FINDING AUTHENTIC LOVE IS HARDWORK. In our day in which so many other virtues are impersonating the glorious virtue of love, discerning what is real from what is false is a lot of hard work. Once I undertook the herculean task of watching all the popular songs on the subject of love on you tube. After watching countless music videos on the subject, reality hit me like a tonne of bricks. Ninety percent of all the songs labeled “love songs” were actually “lust songs”. And when I considered the fact that a great percentage of individuals in our generation derive their definition of a subject from the media, I began to realize how huge a problem we have on our hands. Finding authentic love becomes all the more difficult if majority of individuals have defined it as lust. The truth is also that most movies are not any better than our music either.
Finding true love might involve developing the perseverance and intelligence to test all claims of love for you against some universal principles of the virtue. It some times might mean you have to endure a thousand nos to get to an authentic yes. It might mean you have to remain honorably single until you are able to find a honorable partner who understands what love is and is willing to walk the talk.
The second issue is that MAKING LOVE WORK IS HARDWORK. The easiest part of the love equation is saying “I LOVE YOU”. Everything else is brutal hard work. I remember getting married over the glossy promises of intimacy in marriage not realizing that a dynamic marriage will have to totter between the extremes of intimacy on one hand and responsibility on the other. And there are times when the responsibilities far outweigh intimacy. Lovers must be confronted with the truth,they must be brought down from the foggy cloud of their feelings for each other, to the terra firma of their responsibilities to one another. True love might give you bills to pay,conflicts to resolve, personalities to understand,children to nurture, meals to cook, the sick to care for, in laws to appease, rumors to dispel, clothes to wash, arguments to resolve, an affair to avoid, friends to break up with, a job or jobs to hold or quit, lack to compensate for, a partner to support and believe me when I say all of the above are just to mention but a few.
The third issue is that HARDWORK provides resources for the multifaceted needs that show up in love along the way. This is why economic downturns often lead to relationship downturns. Unemployment can eat at the heart of genuine lovers. Sincerely it is hard to feel your love for one another when the most basic needs are not being met in your relationship. When we strip love of all its innuendos, it is simply a heartfelt commitment to meet the fundamental needs of another. Love is what we feel when our most basic needs are being met consistently, conscientiously and constructively by another. When we are unable to meet the basic needs of our partner, it creates what I call associated irrelevance in our relationship. The relationship might continue as in the case of a marriage but the non providing couple ceases to be relevant in the equation. This why a culture of hard work must be sustained by every lover so as to be able to bring something to the table, no matter how small.
The fourth issue is that the WORKPLACE represents one of the most potent of opportunities for the consummation of long lasting relationships. On the average we would spend somewhere between eight to twelve or fifteen hours at our workplaces daily. When such a huge chunk of time is taken out of your twenty four hour day, what is left for intimate social connections? This is why I intensely disagree with organizational behavioral scientists who advocate restrictions on the development of genuine personal relationships in the workplace simply to maintain employee productivity. This is zenith of institutional wickedness and selfishness. I mean this people are working all their productive hours for them and are still denied the right to connect, in spite of the fact that the opportunities to genuinely connect for love are few after working hours. Such corporate cultures produce the bulk of the single, searching and struggling professionals that my heart reaches out to. Where the organizational culture permits personal connections, a prospective lover must take advantage of it by impeccable and attractive appearance, overwhelming courtesy to the opposite sex, stellar integrity, and a reputation for a superior work ethic that guarantees strategic visibility in the workplace for relationship development.
Finally, hard work enhances the dignity of the lover, because the self sustenance that is a product of such a life style cures one of extreme dependency on your partner for provision. Extreme dependency on another is the root of resentment in all relationships. If allowed to continue, it can make a partner feel you don’t want them, rather that you want them for what you can get from them and this is dangerous. With your personal needs being met by your hard work, a genuine interdependent relationship emerges where we are not with ourselves because we n-e-e-d each other but because we w-a-n-t each other. Wanting each other is by far more important than needing each other. Wanting is the real mark of a matured interdependent relationship.
Most of all you must realize that if your love life becomes great at the end of the day, it is going to be because worked it out and not because you watched it out. Take responsibility for your love life actively today. You will be glad you did.
THE GREATEST IS LOVE!!!
Deji Olabode
Love Dynamics Global.
Enthronement Assembly Lagos.
lovedynamix@gmail.com
@lovedynamix on twitter
BBpin;291C00DD.
Related articles
Awesome piece sir…..we have lots to learn
Thanks father, keep talking to us!
Reblogged this on MY TOTS MY MIND.
Sir, this is wonderful but I’d like some more light on an excerpt from this piece: ‘wanting each other is by far more important than needing each other’. Thanks sir.
I must confess its always an eye opening experience reading