Selfish Love--Faris

Love is something that as a teenage boy, it’s difficult to put into words. By programming, it’s a little more difficult for us to express how things feel. To me, it can’t be explained because everyone has different experiences. However, my experiences with love can be summed up with this: I do not think about the other person when things are going good. You don’t think you’re being selfish with what you want, until it’s gone. In my sober thoughts, I truly thought that I was doing everything I could to keep the relationship alive. One relationship I was in during high school taught me too late that I was selfish. I kept pressure on her because I was only focused on the mentality that, “She got ME. She has to KEEP ME.” But when you’re young and stupid, you take that deep love of someone and just look over, not AT it. After a couple weeks or so, it becomes, “Well it’s been this long and he/she’s tolerated me so far...they won’t leave.” What you have to understand about love is something that should be so simple, but seems to be gone nowadays...it goes both ways. “Love is the only thing that gets bigger as it’s divided” (Thank you Mr. Anderson for that quote). In my relationship, I believed that love means that you are willing to go as hard as you need to in order to keep the relationship from falling. Staying up late with your significant other, compromising with your significant other, addressing issues instead of ignoring them. However, when you’re invested in someone, a weird phenomena occurs sometimes: you forget about them. It turns from “we” to “I”. The idea of love is thrown out the

window and it just becomes about being around each other. In the ending of that relationship, it was because of selfish actions. Love became forced onto that person and not natural. Love became something of a chore and not something you do out of purity. The love of her being my girlfriend became less and less and the love of her company was more valuable. When that started to creep in, I knew things were headed south. I did something I promised myself I would never do...I menatlly checked out of it before it ended. However, as soon as it officially ended, it felt like I finally got above the entitled waters I was drowning in. It finally hit me. I got the reality check I needed. “Oh my God. She actually CAN leave me...” Teenage boys without experiences of real love have this dumb outlook that, “I managed to make her my girlfriend. That should be enough right?” To anyone who has this thought process, it’s not going to lead to a happy ending. Love is something you treat very delicately. Love is something that you constantly have to put forth, and not something you choose to give out. Selfishness is not love. Loving someone hard just to throw it back in their face later is not love. Love humbles you. Love teaches you that someone is willing to put up with you. Not out of obligation, but out of true care. If you are selfish and only see how you loved someone, it’s gonna hurt even more when you come to that realization, but they’ve moved on.