What is it about the seemingly fatal attraction that exists between men and women? Having just watched the tragically sad Anne Hathaway movie "One Day", its highlighted to me that relationships between men and women can be frustrating and complex especially when one or both sides don't convey truly how they are feeling about the other. What is Love? Attraction and chemistry can be obvious to onlookers but to those involved it can so easily end in misunderstanding and heartbreak when feelings aren't communicated and it can be too late when they are. I think this is fairly true for any relationship, not just between men and women.
But particularly with men and women, some people seem to be guarded with their feelings, taking forever before declaring their love for another, maybe it's a protection mechanism or that feelings sometimes take time to develop.
If people can't be free and open about it, to me it raises
the age-old question of what is love. Is it something that exists all around us or is it a sacred feeling only reserved for those closest to us?
According to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), over the 10 years to 2010, marriage has been on the rise and while the median duration of marriage to divorce is 12.3 years in 2010, this is a jump of more than two years since 1989. But in the same breath the ABS shows that divorce, while down on its peak in 2001, is still high. In 2010, the "crude divorce rate in Australia was 2.3 divorces granted per 1,000 estimated resident population". Thankfully this is the same as the 2009 rate. What is love in this situation, when we seem to fall into it and out of it at alarming rates? Or maybe it's just that it's become so easy to divorce these days that at the mere glimmer of problems the term love gets forgotten as people quickly look for ways to escape. I mean of course when a relationship becomes too dysfunctional it makes sense to end it for the sakes of everyone, especially when there are children involved, but I sometimes wonder if in our increasingly superficial world we've become too quick to find an exit.
I think that whatever the meaning or value of love is, it has definitely been cheapened by the number of celebrities trading in their partners or spouses as quickly as they change their underwear. Hopefully the average person regards such superficiality with the grain of salt it deserves but for the younger generations growing up with such easy access to this type of information, I don't blame them if they become cynical about relationships and start to question what is love. In fact it really is no wonder that so many people are seeking an answer to what is love.
But why isn't there a definitive answer? Why aren't we told what it means when we're growing up or when we're at school? Something that might get people talking is an essay by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith titled What is love? that claims to have the answer to this eternal question. For some food for thought the essay can be found on a website for the World Transformation Movement. In the meantime though maybe focusing on improving communications between each other could ease some of the pain that seems to be involved with love.
