Siddharth Kumar

To love in whole or in parts – what is love at all.

Perhaps the greatest philosophical question that has no definitive answer to. Although love can take myriad forms, be it affection towards children, parents, siblings, caring for a friend or extending compassion to an unknown stranger, the most complex manifestation of it is love between two partners. Acts of love towards others arise from a sense of duty or biological hardwiring. It is only when you love a partner that you choose a random person out of so many millions in the world with whom you share your deepest desires, your hidden aspirations, your embarrassing moments and your biggest fears. The person becomes your outlet for expressing who you really are. You expose yourself, layers of your emotions naked, for your partner to see and make peace with it, if they choose.

We are never so selective or fixated in defining what love is for our partner as anyone else. Mainly because we also see our partner as an investment of time and emotional energy. We go out of our way to find one person with whom we want to unravel the darkest secrets of our hearts. The dilemma then usually is whether we accept this exposed naked person as who they really are or receive the parts of it which make them less repulsive to us. I don’t have an answer yet.

We are also always in an ego battle with our partners. In no relationship does a person waste so much time and energy as they do analysing their partner. We all have been accustomed to living with horrible parents, cut off from friends we don’t like or even ignore most of their character traits, which become deal-breakers when it comes to our partners, primarily because we do not see our parents or friends as mirrors of ourselves.

Our partners show us our truly amazing, intricate selves. Or their most pathetic side. We can always move out of our children’s and parents’ lives, but we want to make sure the person we have chosen as a partner fulfils the idea of the partner we have in mind. We want to live an aspirational life with them. We want them to understand what we truly want to say, we want them to act in a manner we consider acceptable, and we want them to make us feel excited and show interest in our most mundane activities.

But often we face the question, is this the person I imagined my life with, is this the person I felt excited about? Do we love them at all–do we accept them as they are, or do we accept the good parts of them and make peace with the bad? I don’t have an answer to that as well.