by Carissa Baston

Created on: September 29, 2009   Last Updated: October 01, 2009

The reason so many marriages fail today is simple: people misunderstand the meaning of "love." The word "love" is used to describe so many things: lust, desire, adoration, admiration, compassion, empathy and sympathy to name a few. Of course we all know that young people who experience their first mutual attraction often times believe they are in love, when in fact they are simply enjoying the feeling of having the object of their desire desire them right back. Then there are the women who claim to always fall for the bad boys or a*holes. These women, more often then not, see before them a project, not a man that they love. They want to tame a wild animal and make it love them. This is more associated to power than love.

There are those who fall for someone with issues. They feel sympathy and want to make this person feel better by bestowing affection upon them, in turn causing them to feel good about themselves. Sometimes people fall for someone who has gone through the same problems as they themselves have faced in life. This situation can go two ways: either they support one another in healing and growing, which may blossom into real love or they have found a person who makes them feel better about themselves because they are not judged for having suffered in whatever the situation may have been.

As I am writing this, I am noticing a pattern. Most of the times we think we are in love, we are not. We are feeling genuine emotions that intricately involve another person, but the way they feel is not the focus. It is the way we feel. Love does feel good, don't get me wrong. But when a person is truly in love with another, the focus of their life is their partner's happiness, not their own. Love is a purely selfless emotion. Love is also a verb. There is mutual effort made on a daily basis to be selfless inside of your love relationship. Love means giving and comprimising while maintaining the essence of who you are. Love never means changing the other person or changing yourself to accomodate them. Of course we can alter behaviors to please the one we love, but only if these changes are benign or in our own best interest.

For instance, I quit smoking to show my daughter and my husband that I love them. The reason I was able to quit was because they never judged me for having a bad habit. They loved me in spite of it. But I could no longer cause them to worry about my health while saying that I loved them. It felt hypocritical and it was. Love is letting the person who loves you help you be the best "you" that you can be. They never want to change you, they only want what's best. And the only reason they are suggesting a change at all is because they purely want what is best for you.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to tell whether love is real until you actually find it. False love is very tricky and blinds us easily. True love is impossible to miss. So, ladies and gentleman, if there is even a single doubt in your mind that you should marry your current partner, don't do it. Break up with them and keep searching. Unless of course you don't believe there is a true love for you out there. I believe with all my heart that if you don't believe you can find it, you absolutely won't.

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