Can you love forever?

To love is to touch the infinite and, at the same time, discover that your arms never reach it, no matter how far they extend. That It is the great paradox of love: it is experienced as eternal, but it ends. It ends, but it never dies. In loving we discover a new logic, in which everything and nothing constantly flirt with each other.

The verb “last” can be imprecise when talking about love. It is a word that fits better with objects rather than feelings. This because loving is a dynamic reality that changes, it modifies, mutates and metamorphoses over time. But if it lives through all these processes, it is precisely because it persists, because it does not die, but rather changes.

If we talk about loving children, parents, siblings, friends or dreams, the degree of stability is usually greater. It’s another thing when we talk about loving a partner. Particularly if it is done from the perspective of the ideal of romantic love, which is static and forever unchanging.

Romantic love does tend to end relatively quickly.. It is about which it is said: “eternal love lasts three months.” It is the most intense phase, but also the most fleeting of love.

Love is an infinite moment

Let’s talk first about loving your partner because it is usually one of the most problematic affections for almost everyone. We are heirs of a romantic idea of ​​lovewhich was built between the 18th and 19th centuries and continues to influence culture.

That perspective, in turn, is the daughter of idealism that has influenced the West so much. It is the one that tells us about “better halves” and about loves that live happily ever after.

And in truth There is a moment of falling in love that anyone could swear will be an eternal feeling. We cannot imagine how this way of loving our partner could change. In this state of quasi-madness, we lose, without intending to, the sense of proportions. That’s why we promise and swear: it will be forever.

Expectations and disappointments

That kind of love generates pretty high expectations.

These oversized expectations are where the first disappointments come from., because loving is a feeling that does not cancel our miseries, pettiness and limitations. Sooner rather than later, all those realities emerge that destroy the romantic ideal that we had previously forged for ourselves.

Ultimately, Falling in love becomes an obstacle to loving. It is true that it feels delicious, but it can also raise the tone of our emotions so much that it prevents us from clearly seeing the greatness and restrictions of what we feel. If this obstacle is overcome without trauma, the true path to love begins.

Love is like a tree: eternal

The tree metaphor is very fortunate. It is enough to see the way in which it is born and grows from a small seed to realize that the destiny of everything that has life is to expand and reach the sky.

The mature tree has its flowers, it has its fruits and gives new seeds so that all that is can be sown elsewhere and begin a new growth, a new story. That’s also how love is. Once it germinates, nothing kills it. It will continue to grow and bear fruit, to start the cycle again forever. As it expands, you can tell if that love is like an oak, a cherry tree, or some different species.

You can love forever

By truly loving, we do so forever. Parents love their children and children love their parents, even if they are not together, even if they have died. Friends are loved in their bright times and in their dark times. We love our brothers and our family, despite any vicissitudes. You love even when you hate. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

By loving your partner you also write a story without an end. With everything and the breakups, the divorces or the abandonments, who has been in our hearts genuinely, will always have a place there. Each of these loves writes at least one line in a story that is irreversible: the one that leads to the deepest paths of what we are and what we have stopped being.

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