What's Love Got to Do with It?

Over the last several years, I have formed a kind of mental repository for debunked pop cultural wisdom, John Lennon to John Hughes and beyond. I try to seal these emotional red herrings away, but they have always had a way of seeping out in the form of insidious and unrealistic expectations.

Good rules of thumb: though as a sophomore you may nurse a debilitating crush on a dreamy senior, it is unlikely that you will end up sitting cross-legged with him on a glass tabletop on either side of a birthday cake. Neither you, nor probably anyone, will ever be as cool as or pull off “Twist and Shout” quite like Ferris Bueller. No resolutions, confrontations, or massively coordinated dance numbers will happen at prom. A band nerd without glasses is likely a half-blind band nerd, not Taylor Swift. In reality, even if someone did try to chase you through an airport to confess everlasting love, TSA would probably tackle that someone before he or she cleared the first couple of gates. Getting the guy (or girl) is hard, yes, but being with him (or her) in real life, doing the work of an adult relationship, is much harder; happily ever after is never, ever guaranteed.

And, unfortunately, love is not all you need.

After my breakup, I experienced brief, passionate, and irrational bursts of anger at John Lennon for propagating such unconscionable tripe. I ignored in those moments that he was only participating in the grand tradition of “love conquers all,” because I found it much more convenient to have one Beatle upon whom to focus my wrath.

The unconscionable tripe, of course, is not the idea that love is all you need, but that love is all you need.

(Also, “unconscionable tripe” may be a bit strong, but it was a painful couple of weeks.)

It was an odd and wonderful experience to be, for the first time in my life, in a real relationship in the real world. I didn’t write him: he came fully formed, ready to screw up in ways I would never have planned and take my breath away in ways I would never have imagined. As a result, and also as a consequence of getting older and wiser (hopefully in equal measure), I began to think about our relationship less in terms of a movie and more in terms of our actual lives: two people in love, trying to make it work. I began to notice delineations in my head, marking out what I knew was fantasy from good, solid emotions, on which I could reasonably act.

The perfect example is my go-to theory about weddings vs. marriage. Yes, I want a wedding. I would like to wear an enormous white dress, attend a smashing party, and be the center of attention for a full calendar day. Shoot, I’d do that tomorrow if given the opportunity. However, I do not want to be married tomorrow. Not by a long shot. I am by no means prepared to join my life with another person’s until death do us part—the very thought makes me a little green around the gills. Which, I think, makes perfect sense: deciding to get married is a two person job. Deciding, on your own, that you would like to be married strikes me as missing the whole point. Marriage is a thoughtful, thorough agreement and promise between two people—at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

To recap:

Wedding: yes. Marriage: no (or, not for a good long while yet).

I never mentioned this theory to my ex, since I thought (accurately) that he might miss the subtleties of my differentiations as his pupils dilated and fight-or-flight kicked in at the mention of “wedding.” In the talk that may have been the beginning of the end of our relationship, he told me that he thought I was hearing wedding bells. I repressed the urge to kick him. I also repressed the urge to tell him that of course I was hearing wedding bells—but that was in no way related to my wanting to marry him any time in the foreseeable future, because I didn’t.

(Again with those pesky subtleties.)

He told me then that he wanted to think about our relationship six months into the future—no further. I was willing to agree to that, since it made sense for us at the time. However, as I started to think about graduate school and my own two year plan, I felt uncomfortably lopsided: I could plan everything else, but there was an enormous STOP sign right there in the path of my relationship. He had told me, in the same conversation in which he outlined the six month rule, that he didn’t want me to make any sacrifices for him. On the one hand, that’s fine, and I can appreciate that as someone whose mother has made many sacrifices for my father. On the other hand, I began to realize, just as I found the distance between wedding and marriage, there is a distance between sacrifice and compromise; between laying yourself down on some metaphorical (or not) altar, and realizing that in order to be together in the long run, sometimes you have to choose something that wouldn’t be your first choice if you were in it alone.

Increasingly I found myself on one side with my new set of subtleties, facing him on the other side with his hard and fast rules.

I find it ill-advised to marry for the sake of being married. I find it heart-breaking when the person you love refuses to budge on things he decided before you came along. And I find that in reality, love is not all you need. You need to be flexible. You need to be mindful of subtleties—of the distances between broad generalizations (that all women want to get married, that all men are commitment phobes, etc.) and the actual individual with whom you’re building something.

Even if it started like a movie, and for a long time was the most wonderful reality, you need to be able to see what something has become and will become.

And if it isn’t all you need—the love and all the rest—you need to be able to walk away.