As young Americans, we receive the notion that it is unacceptable to pursue a truly committed relationship until we reach the age of about 25. The reason for this cultural bias is clear: We live such transitory lives up through our younger years that it is, so to speak, imprudent to find the one with whom you will spend your life until you enter graduate school or the workforce beyond. If I fall in love with someone as a 20 year-old undergraduate, I face numerous problems in the coming years dealing with mostly necessary location changes in my life as a result of pursuing an advanced degree or a job; my course of study dictates a lot about where I need to be, both for schooling and for my career. So this is, I believe, our intellectual and logistical situation. But our emotions tell a different story.
If you are really in love with someone, what does that mean for your future life? That is, if you really feel strongly about a companion, no matter what age you occupy—no matter where you find yourself on this career, and life path—do you not envision a life spent with that other person? As it happened to me, what is your answer when your grandmother asks you, ""So you really like her, huh? Could you see possibly marrying her some day?"" Now, given my age, I am not socially allowed to say ""yes,"" because of course there is so much about the future that is wholly uncertain and so much that will change because of our transient culture. But of course the answer is ""yes"" when I really think unabashedly about how I feel. If you are truly in love with someone, is it not a necessary corollary that you find very pleasant the idea of spending your future with that special someone? The alternative is to decide to ""love"" someone for a relatively stable part of our lives (like college) but know that we won't ‘love' them later—quite a shaky foundation for any type of relationship.
So given this, how does one reconcile an ego-destroying love, on the one hand, with their circumstance as a young individual in a quickly changing world where any constancy in relationships is hard to come by? I don't know. But I think it is illuminating to see what I believe to be the effects of this chasm in our realities.
I think what comes out of this great divide between what we feel and how we are allowed to act is great suffering in our relationships. We find it imprudent to fully open ourselves up to those we love because it is not ""ok"" for us to feel that way, so we refrain. We guard ourselves even in the most self-humbling of relationships. We pursue noncommitted relationships and divide our lives up into friends, family, and those with whom we pursue sexual relations. We have needs in all of these places, and as a void opens up because an individual who is filling one of these needs drops out of our lives, we simply fill that space with another person. We objectify the people we apparently love. It is this type of behavior that causes us to only want to see the good parts of people and to deny the bad. We don't want the struggle and work of a real relationship in which both the good and the bad are exposed and accepted. Why would we do this? We are just filling roles—filling our needs—with people.
More important than anything else, the problem of love herein presented illustrates a pattern of cutting-off. We are not accepting and coming to terms with all that is going on. There is no love in denying one's feelings for another. By no means am I suggesting a solution to this problem or suggesting that we should just settle down when we meet someone we love. I am suggesting, though, that we take the time to let all that is come out, and be open about it. What else are we trying to do here on this earth? I have faith that the solution will present itself; we only have to give it a chance.
Gregory Reeb is a senior majoring in philosophy and analysis of complex systems. We welcome all feedback. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
