Ms Fifikins

I think Sammy Cahn and  Jimmy Van Heusen had it wrong.

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You cant have one without the other.

Well perhaps half wrong. See I do believe you can have love without marriage.

It’s something I have been reflecting on a lot lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-marriage… some of my best friends are married!

Now I have reflected on love before, and I am not going back there today, however marriage is a different story.

I was married for a very long time. Officially from 1992 until 2007, with the divorce coming through last January. The reality was though it was a marriage with a warped view of love.

Marriage was something that was expected. And I had romantic ideas. And religious ones too. But times change and people change too.

I have been to a number of beautiful weddings. The bride and groom have looked gorgeous. The flowers have been stunning. Beautiful music with an awesome party afterwards. Guests dressed up. Champagne corks popped and presents given.

But a wedding does not make a marriage. Japs keeps telling me I have to get married because he wants to ride in a limo! I have told him that he can ride in a limo without me getting married, but he has the association of groovy cars and weddings.

A relationship is a commitment and not one that you make on one day wearing a gorgeous dress with flowers and a party and friends and family surrounding you. It is a commitment you make to each other every day of your life.

The concept of marriage is both legal and religious. I don’t have any religious reasons to believe in marriage and I would like to think I can look after myself. I am getting back on my feet financially.

I adore having a gorgeous man in my life and we are an awesome team. We have commitment and friendship and we care deeply for each other. There is space in our togetherness. And it is great.

Last year I mused about Valentine. I complained about the cards and the chocolates and the roses and the redness of it all.

I also noted that I was not in a relationship and my comments came from that position.

So this year… I am in a wonderful relationship and have the most gorgeous MIML™ whom I <3 dearly. And he knows it, not because I tell him every 5 minutes (actually I don’t!) but because of the way we treat each other, the times we spend together and also the times apart.

I feel loved in return. My heart still skips when I see MIML™ and I smile when I think about him. I love having him as part of my life.

Yet I don’t feel the need for a day to be dedicated to love. Or the celebration of it. Perhaps we just need to live a life of love rather than go OTT with flowers and chocolates and teddies and cards. Do the Tintern motto ‘Factis non verbis,’ knowing that deeds don’t have to include flowers etc…

Oh and as for next Saturday… I’ll show my <3 the same way I would any other day!

Another xkcd!

Perhaps the fact that countless artists and lyricists and poets and philosophers and the like have tried to tell us what love is and all with different meanings means that the definition of love is hard to find.

I suppose as we get older our concepts of love change too. Experiences shape us, scar us, leave us more cynical (me, cynical?). Perhaps they also make us more idealistic. For me, it scares. The hurt of past relationships, the baggage make me wonder if I do know what love is at all.

There are countless lyrics that spring to mind. Perhaps John Denver had it right. Perhaps it is different for everyone. The Beatles seem to think that “All you need is love” to make us special. Of course there is so much schmaltz too. I think just typing Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross will trigger some repressed memories…

Love poems and quotations and philosophies abound. There are wikipedia pages on love and if you were to google ‘love’ you would get over 2.5 billion hits! To think this blog post just adds to them. I’m sure we all have plenty of quotations and lyrics we can reel off the top of our heads. But it still doesn’t help me define what love is.

Psychologically speaking Sternberg decreed the ‘triangle theory’ that love is made up of passion, intimacy and commitment. This is detailed rather nicely by Alex Gunz.

What do you think love is? Is it ‘Friendship set on fire’ or is it more Woody Allen: “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you’re getting this down.” Did Elizabeth Browning get it right when she noted that “Love doesn’t make the world go around, but it makes the ride worthwhile?” Comments on what you think love is would be appreciated.

And so you ask where this thought process of mine has come from. It actually springs from the fish fingers! Both of them keep telling me that I love MIML™. MIML™ asked Imogen what love meant and what being in love meant. She couldn’t tell him. Later on she told me that it meant using Huggies Nappies as that is what the advertising guru had portrayed on a TV advert she had seen.

To the kids it seems so simple. Yet I suppose I am just scared. I got it wrong before and don’t want to again. So to MIML™ Immy and Japs are convinced that we love each other. I love spending time with you and we are a great couple and I don’t not love you. Hope that makes a little sense!

All this post-structural reading and I have created my own binary regarding Valentine’s Day! Doh! Finally at 8.30 I have realised it is not either be loved or not be loved. Even if I didn’t get the roses my colleagues got or the chocolates or the fluffy toys it doesn’t mean I am a failure. Well that’s what I am telling myself anyway!

Oh… and even the Hallmark writer admits there are crap cards out there! I did get some nice ones though! Thanks friends!