I am asking this question because it seems that everywhere I look, this makes a mark that somehow leaves me haunting for answers. Everyday I see things wherein I say to myself, is being in love enough?

There are a lot of things associated with being in love. Being “in love” actually is not what you should call it when you find another person amazingly interesting, lovable, and deliriously attractive. “In love” is a state, and like most “states”, it is something temporary, a fleeting moment, a certain status, something that won’t really last.

So, for the sake of argument and some things I read from The Road Less Traveled,:

The section mainly attacks a number of misconceptions about love: that romantic love exists (he considers it a very destructive myth), that it is about dependency, that true love is "falling in love", that love is cathexis, that love is a feeling. Instead love is about the extending of one's ego boundaries to include another, and about the spiritual nurturing of another, in short, love is effort.

I have been presented with some situations, about a friend having another lover apart from one she already has for nine (9) years. She’s having an affair and she claims that she loves both persons and if the original partner finds out about her affair, she’s going to deny it, and if worse comes to worst, she would not choose either of them. Now, I’ve been asking her if she loves the one she’s been with for 9 years, and without batting an eyelash she says Yes! Now, next question would be, then why are you having an affair with another person? Then here comes the most complicated part of the conversation. Mostly because I don’t approve of her reasons, and partly because I am biased as to listening her explanations why. Then I sort of realized, maybe she doesn’t love the nine years anymore. She’s just staying for the sake of the years spent together, which was rather absurd. So I asked her, “Why don’t you leave that person and stay with the new one? Since that new person obviously makes you happy.” She said no, she could never do that to the nine years, she can never find someone incomparable with the nine-year-person. Wtf? But, hey, that’s her life. My business? No.

Then here comes a TV show about a married couple with a declining sex life. The girl initiates the talk of open marriage and the guy agrees with the premise that it turned both of them on and he just wants to get laid. But in a turn of events, the wife really went out of her way and slept with another guy, believing that they have this “open marriage” thing worked out. However, the husband didn’t take it too seriously and was still waiting for the time when he and the wife could get it on in the sack. Finding out sooner rather than later, that the wife was already sleeping with another guy. So the husband went out his way and slept with another girl.

Sad thing. When this kind of things happen to good couples. Having another person on the side at the same time claiming being in love with the current beau is really absurd. As I mentioned, they were only maybe in a temporary state when they said that they were “in love”. And does this love enough to withhold your desires for other people? It should be. As M. Scott Peck says, love is sustained by not mutual dependence; it actually causes strain on the relationship being too dependent. Therefore true love is achieved by being independent of each other. Meaning, that when you go away and do some stuff on your own, you want to go home and share your experience with your partner; and the partner would do the same without the both of you feeling guilty of left out from each other’s lives. Communication is the key. Plus a truckload of honesty.

Maybe what these people feel when they engage in an affair, they lose the excitement, and they lose the lust they have for the person they’ve been with for a thousand years. Yes, it does happen. You could actually get tired from loving; curse it at times; but you would never stop loving the person if you really started to really, really love that person from the very beginning, inside and out.

There’s this line that the husband from the TV Show said before finding out about his wife’s affair. He said, “I love her, I love the way she smells, I love the way she is with the kids, I love her cooking. I just love her.”

That melted my heart.

Now, did I mention that the nine-year-person found out about my friend’s extra-curricular activities? I actually pity the nine-year-person. To give your love, and your life into nurturing a relationship you hope would last forever; and then reality would hit you right in the face that the person you’re offering the world to doesn’t actually feel the same for you, anymore at least.

I wouldn’t want that to happen to me. If I was with a person and that person doesn’t feel the same way I do?

Now, here’s the cliché. I actually don’t know what to do.