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Sunday 13 January 2008

When You Love Two People At Once

Published my latest article today on Helium and I have to admit I'm not at all happy with it. However, it has been ranked 2nd in a group of 38 which I find pleasantly surprising. I am publishing it here in full and would welcome comments.

Albert Einstein, of all people, said, "If you can drive safely while kissing a beautiful girl, you are not giving the kiss the attention it deserves." The same can be said of love.

Of course, there are different forms of love but assuming we are discussing the romantic variety, is it possible to love two people at the same time? There are, obviously, some practical issues such as jealousy, which would make the likelihood of succeeding in maintaining such relationships, improbable. Aside from the impracticality, however, is it possible to feel the emotion of love for two different people concurrently?

Perhaps we should look at the origin of these feelings. If someone truly loves another, surely there is no need or benefit or even any will, to look for solace beyond the relationship. This is the special bond with another person with whom we are able and willing to share everything. Love, true love, consumes our soul. Developing feelings for another suggests an absence of a crucial component in the relationship.

Most commonly, where such a condition exists, the faltering element is sex related. Issues of this kind would not necessarily mean that love is not apparent between the couple but could possibly be grounds for either to feel the need to seek fulfillment elsewhere.

Open relationships, whereby one partner or both, participate in relations with others, are nearly always for additional sexual options and love only exists between the core couple. The only alternative to this is to enter into an arrangement without the knowledge of the other partner. This precludes love.

Love cannot exist without trust and intimacy. Having an affair or even harboring secret emotional ties to another, is not conducive to either. Romantic love is such a deep and concentrated emotion and as Einstein suggests, to not give it your devoted attention is to do it a disservice.

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2 comments:

Oregongirl82 said...

I'd never heard that Einstein quote before, but I like it. Very appropriate to this post.

Matt D. Barnes said...

It's not something you would expect someone like Einstein to say but surprisingly, he wrote several of this nature. Another of my favourite quotes of his is, "gravitation is not responsible for falling in love."

Thanks for your support.