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The old fairy tale films usually follow the classical love story scheme: a beautiful young princess gets into trouble, often captured by a villain, a brave knight comes to her rescue, she falls madly in love with him, they marry and live happily ever after. Alas, in the real world the princess is not always beautiful and intelligent, the knight is not brave or noble, and the marriage is not happy or long lasting.
Love is not falling in love or having sex. Love is a relationship, a process of building a connection step by step. Only those people who have become lifelong friends and have gone through life hand in hand can say that they love each other.
We like to think of butterflies in our bellies when we think of falling in love, but that’s not the basis for a lasting relationship. If we feel butterflies in our stomachs, it’s more of a biochemical process, but not true love. Superficial familiarity is just that: it goes on top. There’s no point in picking someone to share your life with just because you had a good time at the party.
You can meet anywhere, even at a birthday party, but love is something you build. When you’ve been together a long time and have reached the stage where you trust your partner to help you when you need it, and your partner trusts you to do the same, then you can start thinking of it as love.
There are two levels of love: the first, which we have just described, is a strong emotional bond based on friendship and trust. The second, deeper kind, is the one where the lover lives to give pleasure to the beloved, and derives joy from that rather than from selfish pleasure.
Achieving such love requires more than trust; it requires concessions. Deeper and deeper concessions. “Love,” say the sages, “is a pet that feeds on mutual concessions. If two people are constantly looking for where they can make even more concessions to please the one they love, their love for each other will continually grow.
So the secret to a happy life is to nourish your love for each other with concessions, putting your partner first and yourself second. If you live this way, you will defeat time, your love will become infinitely stronger, and you will never tire of each other or of life.
