What is love, baby don't hurt me šµ
Big concise update for those that I haven't had a chance to tell; I have been engaged for about five months! And the downside of being in a happy loving relationship, I rarely have time to ponder or sulk (haha) and don't have many interesting things to blog about anymore... Anyway recently my fiancee had a deep conversation with one of her in-a-long-term-relationship-but-not-married friends about the idea of love. What is it? What makes one feel loved? What kind of love results in wanting to marry someone? And when does one not feel loved?
For me, because I am a Christian, my idea of love is very much influenced by my faith. I think for Christians, we focus on God's unending love and mostly try to reflect that onto others. But in reality, in ancient greek there are eight or so types of love but I'm going to focus on agape, eros, philia, philautia, and pragma.
For those that may not know here are some simplified explanations:
agape: selfless, unconditional love
eros: sexual passion, and romantic love
philia: deep friendship, characterized by trust, loyalty, and mutual understanding
philautia: love of the self, which can be healthy or unhealthy
pragma: longstanding love, or the deep understanding that develops between long-married couples
Q: So what is love to me? A: Obviously love is a very complicated emotion, and we all have different ideas of it. If I could summarize it into one thought, it would be something like; Love isn't just an emotion or a feeling, but full of action and words. There is no formula for it and you can seek it your whole life and not be able to find it... but for those who are lucky enough to happen upon it, find immense joy and pleasure just being around that person, and although we will always struggle not to indulge only ourselves, but through love, one would wish the others' happiness over their own. Funnily enough, I've had three real heartbreaks in my life and in afterthought, I've assigned them three lessons that were learned - perhaps it was my coping mechanism that all the suffering and the lost and unreceived feelings were not wasted. The first was to learn that love is selfless. The second was to learn that love actually can be selfish. And the third was to know that love only works when you work for it. I think those are all different aspects of love that we either learn on our own, or go through different relationships learning. Now onto the questions!
Q: What do you see in me that you feel loved? A: I think with my fiancee, she is so selfless and always so understanding of me. I am a very selfish person... yes yes, I'm an only child ha ha ha, but really I've lived for 30+ years only having to really cater to myself. If I don't want to eat at say a thai restaraunt, I don't have to. Omg, like pho... ever since I was a child, I've hated it... but for some reason my fiancee loves it and always threatens that I need to eat it with her. But we've been together for more than 500 days and she hasn't made me eat it once :) But that's also a nice change, to get me out of my comfort zone, which I love! She is also always making an effort in how to make me feel loved. She always considers my feelings and oftentimes adjusts her wants and needs to accommodate my own. And so in this respect of love what I see in her is agape love. I also just love spending time with her, and I know that is also influenced by being separate by literally an ocean, but I do sincerely think of her as my best friend. I trust her with my deepest darkest secrets, my anxieties, and know that she feels the same way about me. And so with these themes, we see the aspect of philia love.
Q: What made you want to marry me? A: I think some of the previous question overlaps with this one so I'll expand upon some other aspects. Firstly eros haha. It may be gross to some people to hear about others being lovey dovey and all that but before meeting Seonjoo, I really have contemplated about marrying someone that I'm not necessarily physically attracted to... well it was either that or being single for the rest of my life haha. But in regards to my fiancee along with the two previous points I've made, there is always that longing of physical touch. I know that love cannot be sustained by mere longings of the flesh but I think it is an important aspect of love and God made us with these desires for a reason! Another aspect that I think that convinced me to want to marry her is the idea of being with her for the rest of my life. The longing for a pragma love with her. Obviously at some point, you have to decide, is he/she the one I want to spend the rest of my life with? And for me, it came very simply and fairly early on. Maybe five months into dating her we took a trip to Vancouver, BC, she had made her now infamous trip itinerary excel sheet and listed were all these places she had wanted to visit but there were some empty spaces as well, either for me to decide or for us to find things spontaneously. A. I loved that she had made a schedule for us, B. I loved that she included me on the decisions, and C. I loved that she left room for us to discover things on our own. We ended up finding a ģģ„ė©“ place that was really good, we discovered that we cannot fully trust instagrammers and tiktokers for suggestions on AYCE places... we even got an upgrade to our hotel room! So I think I just really enjoyed that trip and realized that I probably wouldn't want to go on a trip like that with anyone besides Seonjoo :)
Q: When do you not feel loved? A: I don't know how much I've ever sincerely expressed these feelings with my fiancee, mostly because I just never feel unloved by her, but I'll try to explain now. I think for me the times I feel most unloved in general, are times that I was not thought about. Not my feelings, or my preferences, but just me as a whole. There have been a few people I've met and gotten to know since I've been dating my fiancee, and obviously they might not consider me a real friend yet, but for me, my friendship bar is fairly low. I enjoy most everyone and unless you've seriously wronged me, and sometimes even then, I will get over it and still consider you a friend. That is until you stop including me and I think that happens to both parties. Without going too much into detail, it severely takes a toll on my energy and confidence when I invite people and they reject or can't make it. This creates a big chasm in my heart so I tend not to get past the "oh, we should definitely hang out!" kind of stage and don't go out of my way to see if people want to hang out. I'm sure others have interpreted that as me being superficial or not-interested but it's mostly because of my defense mechanism to not be in pain haha. And so, when these kinds of people hang out without me, I feel a bit sad that I wasn't invited because in my mind I already consider them as friends. I think this is one aspect of philautia love that can sometimes become unhealthy :(
But getting back to love... for me, all of the listed types of love are different aspects of love and I've had the immense joy of receiving and giving all of them through my relationship with you, my future wife. I hope this long response will help both of us to understand each other better and love each other even more. I love you!
P.S. One thing I've learned is that I forget to respond by asking the same question to the one who asked me. So now it's your turn! You can tell me in person though since you don't write as much hehe.