The feeling of falling in love, having a crush, is also not love... but rather a temporary intoxication. To have a crush on someone is definitely not the same as loving someone, although people mix these things too much.
And if it lasts 40 years is it also a temprorary intoxication?
I think love has many colours and textures and I say "yes" even if temporaryif infatuation if intoxication, it is love, a taste of love, not the all love, but it is a taste of it. We love because all our being asks for union, for melting with the beloved. But of course that is too much and God usually does not give us much of it. We mi8ght in fact get more than we can handle and then really, really become deluded thinking how great we must be that we have managed the difficult thing of earning the perfect love.
I rather suffer for love one hundred times than to think love is another word for success. In many things said about couple love, the final conclusion seems to be that if it does not turn out right it is failure on our part. I reject that outright. Love is never a failure, no matter how much disenchantment, unrequited love, heartbreaks or whatever, we are never cheated on anything. Love is there for us to love, not to be loved. If you love, no matter how disappointed to get, you still have done your part of the deal, and you earn your lesson, and GROW, like when you have pains in the knees or other parts because you are growing up.
I think we should thank God from our fearts for every love in our lives, every infatuation or intoxication, it is not a a disgrace or a failure, it is a gift, it is the most heartening of gifts.
I agree with all the criticism of romantic love for the absurd expectations it has brought people, specially women to have from men and the deapth of humilliation a abjection so many have undergone for the sake of that kin of love. But that said, what a gift it is... no gift can match falling in love and staying in for however long. While it lasts you are a believer. The challenge is to continue being a believer after it is ended. But we should thnk god. Wehumans ar enot meant to be perfect, but to be alive, be warriors in a quest, daring and trusting in our destiny. Whatever amount of union we may experience in a failed love, we may think that it was a cheat, that we cheated ourselves, nd it may be so, it is so. But not abosolutely so. There is always something, at the cor, that is true the truest of the truth. God has given us something that we maight not have expected that was not all, but that was like having a gold piece of unending beauty. It is not all the gold of the world, but it is still gold and of the purest kind.
What one should not do is loose self respect, dignity letting oneself become a steping slab for somebody unscrupulous. No matter how tempted we feel to give in to that person because we are so much taken up with him or her, we should put a limit to the concession, even while in love we should serve ustice and equity and not let somebody we love do things that we despise just because we love him adn he can get away with them. So, if it ends, when it ends, we will not be bitter at our own errors and indignities.
Love comes, I said, in many colours, the love of friendship, the love of beauty, the love of a father or a mother, or of a sibling or the love for your neighbours, for people you do not know, for everything. Those are the colours of love, as many as there are things in existence.
But please, do not do away with the colour of "romantic" love. The rainbow would get mad at you.
Salaam
