*LOVE*

One of the most well known statistics these days is about married couples and divorce, what happens, does the love run out? It is said that approximately one in every two marriages ends up in divorce within the first few years of marriage. Even though the percentages are against love, there are still many couples that have been and still are together for many years. Knowing that the statistics are very high, I have decided to ask people what they think about love. Do you think love is real? Do you truly believe in love and that there is one perfect person for everyone? Love is one of, if not the hardest word to define because its true definition lies within the person defining it.
Wikipedia describes love “as any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness.” The Singapore Medical Journal says that “Love is defined as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.“ There is not one word that can describe love because whether you believe in it or not, everyone has their own opinion. I went around and did some research and my findings were quite typical, I believe. I interviewed six people, three males and three females, all in different age groups, and asked them all the same questions: do you believe in love, have you ever been in love, and why do you feel this way.
Three of the people that I interviewed told me that they absolutely think love is real and that they believe in it 100%. The people on this side of the spectrum were two men and one woman. They basically all told me that even though love isn’t exactly the easiest thing to find, they know that the ‘right person’ is out there somewhere. Of course, all three people have also been in love, which causes them to believe in it so strongly. One person told me that he knows love is real every time he looks into his significant other’s eyes and sees that she hides nothing from him. Another person told me that she believes in love because, “Without love, my world would fall apart. He [my husband] is the one thing I think of all day and all night, and that feeling I get whenever I’m with him; that’s love”.
On the other side of course, are the other three people I interviewed, and as I predicted, they all hated the word ‘love’ and everything it stands for. This time, two women and one man agreed that they didn’t believe in it one bit. They all three agreed that once in their lives they had been in love, or what they thought love was. When it came to why they disbelieve now, the stories took an unexpected turn, but all had quite a similar end. One person was cheated on, the other’s significant other passed away, and the third claimed his significant other ‘fell out of love’ with him. In all cases, these three people were hurt and as the saying goes ‘had their hearts ripped out of their chests’. Although none of the three had gone through what the others did, they all were in terrible disbelief and were full of hurt when their relationships ended. They all told me that they devoted so much time and effort into their relationships and they received nothing in return, which is the reason why they were all so sour on the topic.
After interviewing these six people and reading over the notes I took and the responses they wrote to me, I realized that, I agree and disagree with both groups, the people that do believe, and the people the despise love with a passion. Contrary to my belief though, I did realize that each side isn’t specifically only for one gender, because the answers came out even on both ends. I realized something that was under my nose the entire time; everyone that had been hurt in the past stop believing, and everyone that is still in a happy and committed relationship believes in love to the fullest. Of course, it was just my luck that I found six people that each had strong views on the issue, I fall in the middle. I believed in love when I was in a happy relationship and thought that everything was going well, and as soon as the relationship ended, I became very sour and almost hated the word love and what it meant. Now though, after some time has passed, I feel as if love is real and that it may take a very long time, but there is someone for everyone and that people shouldn’t be bitter about endings, but happy because they happened in the first place.
I know that no two people are a like and that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is why I chose this topic. I know that many people feel strongly about love, either positively or negatively, and that is why it caught my attention. The people I interviewed happened to have been from two opposite sides of the spectrum, which I have come to realize is very normal, but when I asked myself the same questions, I found that I didn’t believe or disbelieve, I was somewhat in the middle. Does that make me abnormal? No, I think it makes me hopeful that even though life has handed me lemons, I’ve made lemonade and I’m ready to sit back and enjoy it.