OverateD love

OverateD love
Featured article written by Frances Kome Parker

Having read fifty shades of grey and hopelessly fallen in love with the male protagonist of the book christian grey. I then ask myself this simple questions “why is love overrated?”.That’s a rather absurd question, isn’t it? But that question is brewed on personal life experiences and also that of family and friends.
I have recently come to the conclusion that love is highly overrated. It makes you stupid and trusting and gives other people a loophole through which they can stab at you while they laugh at your gullibility. Jealousy also sucks because it makes otherwise sane men into Dr Jekle/Mr Hyde monsters. Too bad we weren’t made like the majority of the animal kingdom – go into heat, mate and part peacefully. They don’t love because they were born knowing ‘love’ stands for Lousy Overrated Vile Emotion. I am so tired of trusting men and watching them stomp all over my heart for one or another trumped up reason. Those books should change the title to say ‘Women are from venus, some men are from mars – but some are from hell – women beware’
Sorry for coming across so harshly. Hope I haven’t offended anyone. I am aware that there are a few good men out there (outside of the french men LOL) but boy, at times it doesn’t seem that way. And men say women can be evil.
A friend was torn between two relationships. One is based on stability, future-oriented thinking, supportive (and very well-to-do) in-laws, and more or less living up to people’s expectations(arranged marriage).The other is based on pure passion,a sort of love at first sight that’s totally impractical and has no real future.

Being the hopeless romantic that she was she choose the second, marring for love.The problem with marrying for love is that we pretend that love is just one thing, some kind of amazing fairytale passion that’s supposed to persist forever and ever. In the movies, we always want the characters to drop everything, even ongoing stable relationships, and go after their heart’s true love. But what movies typically don’t show is what happens 5, 10, 15 years down the line. What then happens when there is neither passion nor order? N̶̲̥̅̊o̲̣̥w̶̲̥̅̊ she is at d bitter end wishing she had gone ahead wit d arranged marriage.Arranged marriages are more likely to skip the initial fling, but not always. (Truth be told, my knowledge here is more sketchy and based on d few iv witnessed, I don’t really know the research on the tendencies of arranged marriages, in particular, over time.I assume that the ones that work also evolve into a similar kind of intimate friendship, whether or not there’s much passion in the beginning.

But, with the freedom to marry “for love” comes additional burdens: extra anxiety about the future,the despair of loneliness,the pressure of finding that “right person”,the fear of dying alone, the frustration of not loving someone who loves you or loving someone who doesn’t, the dramatic highs and lows of turbulent relationships, the disappointment in giving up and “settling” for someone who’s only good enough, and on and on.

The harsh reality of single life is another one of the costs of individualism, of a society of disconnected individuals looking for something to fill them up (when all along they just need each other. In truth, I sometimes wish I’d just had a marriage arranged for me so that I didn’t have to worry about it so much.
But the cure for meaninglessness is human companionship. I contend that we’d avoid so many problems and so much existential angst if we just had more structured social support systems, including marriages that were contractual arrangements geared toward certain ends and with negotiable terms.

Who says love and marriage must go together like a horse and carriage? I mean, just look at the success of the horseless carriage or “automobile..

But, this is all just absurd… *sigh* (I could probably use some companionship.)