We fall into love expecting an eternity
of happiness and rainbows only to find that true love is something hidden in
the folds of this passion. When the passion has resolved into a comfortableness
without an extreme burning passion, and you still want to be with that person,
you are in love. So many people mistake this extreme passionate love for the
lasting love. The story is told over and over again from the recently
ex-boyfriend/girlfriend talking about how they had to break up because they had
become different people. The truth is that you have not become different
people, the only difference that has occurred in your relationship is that you
have finally accepted who that person really is leading to the realization that
you don’t actually like them as a person.
While reading the book The Bad Girl
by Mario Vargas Llosa I saw a rare look at a woman who knew that when you are
under the influence of love for too long you will start to learn about a person
which will lead in a lack of passion. Lilly was only looking for passion she
thought that she had no need of love, it could not provide her with riches or
even a comfortable life. She attempted to tell the main character Ricardo of this
phenomenon by saying, "If instead of sending me to Cuba that time you had
let me stay with you here, in Paris, how long would we have lasted
Ricardo?" after he misunderstands and tells her how they would have had a
long happy life together she replies. "How naïve you are, what a
dreamer." (Llosa, 57-58). Although in the book this character plays a
heartless femme fetal, she knows how to play the game of love. This
understanding of passion and love allows her to be able to manipulate men so
that she gets what she wants. To marry her first rich husband she uses the
influence of one of her lovers to get her out of Cuba and military training,
paving the way for the marriage. Later when she leaves the husband for a
different lover she steals his entire band account. Even after she has
completely ruined him this poor man still admits that he would have given it to
her if she had just asked
In
that one sentence you can see that she was telling him that their passion would
have dwindled quickly. The larger the passions the quicker the love dies out
and this is because with this intense passion comes obsession. He had so much
love for her that he devoted his entire life to her whenever they were
together. While this is romantic, it is impractical for creating a sustaining
love. With all of his time, energy, and money devoted all at once he would have
soon grown tired of her and not have held the passion with such an obsessive
nature. She flames his love by slowly destroying him when they are together and
apart. She goes to great lengths to make her seem unreachable when she is
always just around the corner waiting for him. She shows this by going as far
as having a husband. Yet, during that time she still sleeps with Ricardo,
holding onto him loosely.
In my own relationship I have undergone
the passion and had it die down to a lasting love. Possibly the cause of this
is because we have never been the primary focus of each other. We have always
put schooling first which is what has driven us apart for all of these years.
The closest we have ever lived to each other was an hour away and for three of
the six years that we have been together he has been five hours away. But the
fact is that we have spent a lot of time together and I can confidently say
that I now know who he is and I still like him for that. In fact, I love him
for that. Although it would be a lie to say that I'm mad with desire over him,
it would also be a lie to say that I'm not in love with him.
Love is one of those rare things that is
the both the antidote to its own poison and its poison to its own antidote.
This is a fact that Lilly in The Bad Girl knows too well. Time and time
again we see people falling for this feeling of love. Even if we can't find
love we look for it in other sources such as food and on-line dating. These
other passions serve as distractions that we pour ourselves into until we find
our loves. Lilly used parks, art, and museums to distract Ricardo when they were
together. By going to these villas she was able to keep him from stewing in his
passions and stretching it out so that it lasted. Eventually when the parks and
museums got to become less fun she would leave him abruptly. This surprise
departure would leave him startled and wishing for her so that she knew she
could go back to him if she ever wanted to.
Just as Ricardo felt a loneliness when
he was without his Lilly, we feel incompetent, inept, and unlovable if we cannot
find this love. But to what avail do we search for it for. Usually, at the end
of the day we end up hurt. We make ourselves believe that this love is an
antidote to our problems. It will allow us to be forever happy and content with
ourselves. Yet once we go through this phase of passion where we can't get
enough of this person we eventually find that this object of our desire is only
a human being. If we could fall in love with completely obscure and perfect
things such as, angles and art forms; really anything that would obtain its
perfection forever then maybe we could love passionately, forever. But even
with perfection we grow bored. We are imperfect humans who fall in love with
other imperfect humans. It is a recipe that in most cases ends in only hurt and
heart ache. We learn about the person and then either grow bored or dislike
that this other person has emotions that do not involve pleasuring us and, more
often than not, annoy us.
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