Maybe We Should Be The Generation Of Misjudged Love

What is love? What does it mean to be in love? If it's not returned are we supposed to immediately be able to love/be in love with another person? What's the time limit that we set for ourselves? How are we to know if it's love, if the majority of us don't even stick around long enough for the other to wake up? Has our generation completely muddled what the feeling of love is, to be replaced by lust/desire/passion and the need for good friends?

When I have sat and considered my friends, I have seen good people with good hearts. People willing to give their all for a friend in trouble. Who are there when you need them and even when you don't. They are smart people, with good heads on their shoulders. So for people with good heads, good hearts, and the ability to give their all for someone else, how did we come to a point of being so selfish when it comes to relationships?

In some ways I have a hard time putting this thought into words, because I am just as guilty of these actions as anyone else. Here is where I will begin. I don't know anyone in my life who isn't looking in some way or another for a person that will be a balance of their less than admirable traits, who will challenge them in every part of their life to be better, and who will provide a sexual life that is pleasing and more than satisfying, yet at the same time these same people go out and hook-up with randoms because it's fun. I think a major problem with our attitude toward the idea of a relationship is our definitions of our behavior and the multitude to which we have definitions. So I will lay out all the different words for a relationship status and their definitions as best I understand them, and then I'll continue this thought.

Relationship Status/Definitions:
1) Talking: Interested, but not serious, no commitment as of yet, but both parties are interested and seeing where things lead.
2) Hooking Up: May be a thing of convience, not necessarily a sign of a relationship to come, no commitment unless previous discussed between both parties
3) Fuck Buddies: Fun but not serious, no commitment, attraction but no future
4) Fling: Long-term fuck buddies, no commitment
5) Dating/Seeing each other: Recognition of attraction and possible future, no commitment thus far
6) Open Relationship: In an official relationship, depending on agreement allowed to anything from hook up (see definition above) or date (see above definition) another party
7) Together/Couple: A relationship in which both parties agree to be monogomous with each other and are attempting to create a future with each other

Now I'm sure that I'm missing some terms and may even have the definitions a little backward, so feel free to correct me, I won't mind. The point of this is that with 7 different terms for what could be happening, only 1 has commitment involved, 2 if you include an open relationship. What does that ask of us as responsible adults? Test ourselves often and have fun. Is that what love comes down to now? Or is it more that we are to have fun, but not commit until we're sure that love is involved somewhere in the relationship. Maybe I am protraying this as too simplified. Since the large majority of us will not find the one we will spend our futures with until at least 23-25 years of age, is it completely understandable to have fun from the time that we lose our virginities until 23-25, because there's no hope for those relationships lasting anyway.

I would propose something completely different. Since those relationships that we have between those ages have died either peaceful or god awful horrible deaths, they are not any less worthy, because I would contend that they taught us something about what a relationship entails; commitment, patience, compassion, balance, compromise, faith, fun, laughter, anger, fights, etc. Most importantly love and respect. If we can hook up with someone and not ever have to put in the time, effort, and emotion that goes into building a healthy, balanced relationship, how will we ever learn how to, because one day we will meet that person that we want to be with monogomously, yet we've never learned how to weather bad times to get to the good again. So at the first sign of trouble we jump ship, because this isn't what it's supposed to feel like, right?

Also I would contend that love is something that cultivates over time. Yes, of course, I believe in being in love, but I don't believe that you reach a point that you're in love with someone and there's no more growing (feeling-wise). I believe that if you compare two couples that are truly in love with each other, one has only been together a year and the other ten, you will find that the ten year relationship has learned how to love each other in a way that one year simply cannot, and it is no fault of the one, it's something cultivated over time.

In my own personal life, I am with someone that I love and with whom I'm in love. That I have loved for three years, and who I love way more than I did at the beginning. I'm sure, beyond a doubt, that she loves me more today than she did a year ago. We are very different people, even in regards to this subject. I, being more of the "serial monogomist" that she has so aptly named me, and she was more of the "go out and have fun" type, seeing those people who got into relationships as having settled for someone rather than continuing to look. Does it mean that every relationship that I was in before this one I had settled and does it mean that she never learned the ways of a good relationship? Obviously it's not as cut and dry as this post makes it out to be, but nevertheless I wish my generation would question their approach to love and the art of relationships, because I watch too many of my friends relationships fail, not because they weren't good for each other, but because they were, but couldn't weather the pain it takes to grow together.

Still, my question remains the same; how are we to know whether it is love when we don't even wait for the other person to wake before leaving?