In a few days, well will be celebrating a week of love. Roses, chocolates, flowers and cards – the gift industry is going to make great business. There’s going to be love in the air and we’re going to be holding hands and all that jazz but not some us.
This is not about glorifying single-hood as a means to console those who don’t have a valentine. This is still about love but darker. The context of Valentine’s Day is brought only because the darkness of such love seems deeper in contrast to the pink and red of the season. Let’s talk about such love that’s not meant to be, not to be gratified, never to liberate and will always leave you dry.
1. Unrequited Love – of never having tasted love
Funny thing about love is we can’t really expect anything out of it. However, it is strangely pleasurable to mock our hopelessness by keeping the passion burning for someone who is never going to be ours. We learn to cherish the rejection almost like a Stockholm Syndrome with pain.
Some of us remain passive aggressive to our own selves while some of us resort to stalking, threats or even acid attacks. Either way, it is self destructive. It is almost inexplicable why we let ourselves down day after day while the world tells us that it is apparently very easy to let go. It is like a dark dead-end with no one to blame.
2. Love for cheating partners
It is those times when none of the partners are ready to address the elephant in the room and each have their own reasons. While it is too painful for one, the other finds it convenient. You know the coy smile on your partners lip is from his or her one-nighter with someone else but you choose to ignore. You’d rather let yourself be crushed than lay the truth out on the table.
You doubt the benefit of such confrontation which might take away whatever little you have to hold on to. You don’t really want a closure even though you can’t look in eyes of your family and friends. You wish to keep this a secret and hope for better days even though you know, what’s done is done.
3. When you’re a monogamous partner in an open-relationship
You can’t really complaint for it’s not cheating when it’s not a secret anymore. It may have started differently but eventually, you both have agreed to be in an open-relationship. You never really wished for it from your heart, but you agreed anyway. Your partner always had a foot outside the door and you didn’t have much of a choice.
You thought it was just a proposition, agreed upon it thinking your selflessness would be appreciated. But hey, you fooled yourself, didn’t you? Now you doubt if you were well rounded enough to be fulfill every need of your partner. You even convinced yourself that you have a deeper, more profound understanding of love this way. Yet You have been crying yourself to sleep lately.
4. Love for abusive partners
You’ve been wearing a lot of scarves and unusually large sunglasses lately. Your friends and colleagues have started making fun of your fashion sense and all you do is fake a laughter at their jokes hoping the topic passes by.
It’s been a while since the abuses started and you know that if you showed the bruises to anyone, they’d ask you to break free of the relationship. However, you know it’s harder than that. You have invested too and you just can’t let it all go and it’s not even necessary that you rely on your partner for survival. You have been innovating sins that you must have committed in the past to deserve this.
5. Love of abusive partners
You know you have been a little rough with your partner today. You have raised your voice, shoved and even hit him or her before but today there was blood. You’re so sorry and you want to kneel and beg for forgiveness. The problem is, you know that you’ be forgiven and that’s why you love your partner. You love them so much that you want to own them.
You can’t really accept the fact that things can really be anything less than perfect, that your every expectation would not be met or your desires would not be gratified. You deem your relationship too perfect and precious to let go and you have convinced yourself that it’s not your frustration but your self-appointed duties to protect your love that drives you to beat the love of your life black and blue.