I spent my Saturday night with a friend on the precipice of a hefty breakup. One of her many concerns was the power dynamic in her plummeting relationship.
I really had nothing to say on the matter, because that’s not an aspect of relationships I tend to consider.
Like…
At all.
This could be why my last one fucked up so badly. A part that I didn’t even realize existed was broken.
There’s one thing the other half of that said to me back in December that’s been rattling around my heart since then.
“I think I loved you.”
I have just assumed that I should be reciprocating that sentiment. But I don’t share those feelings.
I know I love you.
I might not be happy with you. I might not trust you. I may have lost most of the respect I had for you. I might know that you can’t be in my life.
Even if you wanted to be.
But the notion that any of that should change my most simple, essential and absolute feeling for you is blatantly apocryphal.
I can’t pretend otherwise.
Now, I concede that my beliefs about the nature of love are, perhaps overly, informed by spiritual conceptions of the subject. Christianity’s agape and Buddhism’s metta, in particular. These are simply the core of my understanding of love, and regardless of its manifestation, I will always cultivate it from this.
Love doesn’t come and go. It’s not a delicately tenuous condition that needs to be constantly and carefully maintained. It’s a robust truth that nurtures us, even when we neglect to nurture it.
unconditional
infinite
powerless
HR Lincoln 
i like this very, very much, and i agree with the essence of it; i also don’t see it as something that comes and goes, it is not delicate. however, do you think that perhaps there has to be some nurturing on our part? and i guess, thinking of buddhist tenets — love might die away, but it can also be reborn. perhaps it’s always there, in that infinite state, but we have to make it manifest? which reminds me of the ursula leguin quote: “love does not just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new”. what do you think of that?
I basically agree. I suppose I’m simply conceptualizing it as something extremely basic, like a force or a dimension or something. So, I suppose I don’t necessarily agree with the assertion that it’s something we make so much as it’s something that we simply need to accept as true and essentially omnipresent.
Past that, however, I would certainly acknowledge that it’s a good idea to cultivate it, and pay as much attention to it as possible. Try and live in that dimension.
I dunno, I’m mixing a lot of metaphors here. :S