Love Truths: No.1

Today I will be starting a series on love - this object that teenagers waste all their energies pursuing, that young adults pretend to be cynical about, that older men affirm by saying - 'Of course I love you what. We're still married, aren't we?' - and then returning to the sports' page of their newspapers.

These are the few truths that I have learnt or borrowed from the words of others.

Love Truth No. 1:

We often fall in love with our image of someone rather than the person itself.

In one of the underrated songs in his Continuum album, John Mayer's I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You), he asks this question hauntingly in the bridge:

Who.. oo do you love?
I see thro..ough your love
Who.. oo do you love?
Me, or the thought of me?
Me, or the thought of me?

We will set our hearts on a certain person - be it due to our inbuilt affinities for the way they look (to each their own, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder etc.), or due to them being the life of the party, or posessing talents that we wished we had.

And once we latch on to this idea - this initial phase of love, this infatuation, we are blinded to everything else and this person can suddenly do no wrong. We filter the things we hear about them and will only accentuate the positives (oh, she must be intelligent then, she is so good with children, she laughs in such a cute way, she must be a great cook).

They remain Prince Charming or Cinderella for as long as we are spellbound. Some of us who are more stubborn stay in this illusion for longer.

And many times, especially when we were younger, we would tend to write the fairytale ourselves in our heads -

We will be married
in a garden ceremony
on a beautiful sunny Saturday
and he will sing to me
and we will have two, no, three children
- two boys and a girl -
and he will be great with the kids
and he will do the dishes without complaining
and he will whip up incredible meals
and he will come home tired from work but still smiling
and he will support me in my work
and he will be funny and popular among my friends
and we will build our suburban heaven
and live happily ever after.

- and all this before even getting the courage to speak to the boy or girl in question.

Who do you love? Me, or your thought of me?