Hello. You may not remember me, I used to write things here about 74 years ago… I won’t bore you with the details of where I’ve been, but it involves settling into a new job and suffering a scorching case of writers block.
Oh look at that, I did bore you after all. Well anyway, I’m here now so I might as well make myself useful.

Now don’t run off or get all awkward, I’m going to write something about love. Yes, the crazy little thing called love.

What is love anyway?

Please don’t think I’m using Queen and Howard Jones song titles lightly here, because I would never do such a thing.

Mills & Boon. Cupid. Mr. Darcy. Is that love? People (usually women) certainly seem to think so.

These may well be the ramblings of a female suffering from bank holiday boredom as I am, but do we all see love differently? What may look like a loving gesture to one person could be repulsive to another.

What does love mean to me? Is it staring at the moon and howling? Oh no sorry, that’s werewolves, that’s the next piece I’m writing.
Is it song words? Poetry? Someone crossing great distances to be with you? Signs and symbols that you read into deeply because it’s what you want?

In thinking about writing this, I watched some romantic films to compare the different way great loves are depicted. My choices were:

Wuthering Heights (demented, obsessive love)
The English Patient (star crossed)
Serendipity (fated to be, no matter what)
Pretty Woman (hero boy meets whore)

Wuthering Heights

Right, I’m not going to lie. The love portrayed in Wuthering Heights really does it for me. Yes, he’s mental over her and her loss eventually twists him into something almost inhuman… but there are few couples so meant for each other as Catherine and Heathcliff. Each can literally barely exist without the other. Is that what women want? For a man to be almost senseless and without reason over her? Certainly this kind of love is common in film and literature so there must be a market for it, doomed though it is. It’s slightly unhealthy though if I’m being completely honest.

The English Patient

The English Patient differs in that while Almasy develops a fairly violent love based on attraction for Katherine, it deepens into something that completely envelops both of them, regardless of her marital status, his seemingly distant nature, and their ultimate separation. They want to be together but can’t through circumstances beyond their control, and it’s a tortured star-crossed situation.
The love they feel for each other is the selfish kind that tramples over the hearts of others, with the couple in question seemingly powerless to stop it, and yet these events always seem to end in heartache for all concerned. Why? Some kind of payback? The thing that books and Hollywood seems to be saying here is that once you’ve made your bed, you lie in it. But only with your husband/wife and no-one else as it’ll just end in tears and…

…DEATH.

Serendipity

In Serendipity it’s almost a love at first sight thing. There are signs and signals for both of them. They are parted accidentally after meeting one night, not knowing how to find each other, but putting everything into the hands of fate. He writes his name and number on a $5 bill and she writes hers inside a book. Guess what? Years later just as he’s about to marry someone else, he finds the book in a second hand shop, and she receives the $5 in her change. Do these things happen? Would it be wise to test the theory and run the risk of possibly losing the one you think you’re supposed to be with? What if you never found them again, my god imagine how bitter you’d be. Who would you blame? You…the fates, or yourself for believing in them? Could I possibly ask more questions about this than I have already?

Pretty Woman

Finally we have Pretty Woman. It’s a hero story, the knight in shining armour saving the princess from a hideous fate, which in this case is prostitution. It’s ultimately a story of acceptance too, he loves her regardless of her past and becomes her protector when his horrible work colleague tries to take advantage.
Men supposedly enjoy this role. My point of view may be terribly old fashioned, but I enjoy this idea too. I suppose you’d say I was a daddy’s girl, and you’d be right, my dad was my hero and because of his protective influence I enjoy being looked after. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.

These are all fine and sometimes beautiful depictions of our most important emotion, but it’s the literary and Hollywood idea of it.
That’s rarely how love is in real life.

My own view of love was forged while growing up, from watching my parents.
NO, I didn’t watch them doing THAT, they NEVER did THAT. I was brought here by a stork. *curls into a ball, sobbing*

Amongst the many ways he showed my mum how much he loved her, I remember my dad once put his hand into a toilet full of sick to retrieve her false teeth after she vomited them in there.
No, it wasn’t our idea of a really scary family Halloween game, but rather a display of the lengths that human beings will go to when they truly love each other.
You can keep your Valentine cards, if a bloke is willing to put his hand into my sick to retrieve something I’ve dropped, he’s the one for me. It’s that kind of gesture that says ‘I will do absolutely anything, even something as fucking disgusting as rooting around in your puke, to make you happy’ and it goes beyond love songs, cuddly toys and expensive gifts.

All in all, to me, love is sacrificing unselfishly, and asking for nothing in return. Having no need or want for personal gain, standing by someone no matter what they do or what happens to them, because you understand and love them in the deepest possible way. Being a half of someone else, and feeling less than whole when they’re not there.

I don’t think it’s an unrealistic ideal either, because I saw it firsthand. A Hollywood film about my parents wouldn’t be the most glamorous love story in the world, but it would be the most real one.
Though it could probably do without the vomit scene.