What I Learned About Real Love from a Novel

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On my review for the last novel I read (I Am Not Me) I said I had tabbed a lot of quotes and that I would probably use another post for them. This is the first quote I tabbed. [/i]"...Darling, I just want you to love me, nothing more," she pleaded. "I want you to think of me every minute and every hour of every day. I want you to forget about everyone else but me. I want you to be obsessed with me. I want you to be mine alone and no one else. I want you to kiss me and touch me and feel me all over."[i] My immediate thought was, yeah, that's what I want. That's what has been missing in my relationship. But reading it again and again I realized that was a bit TOO much. Very possessive. Then along came this quote. The character was reading the real book "No Man Is An Island" (which I have not read). [/i]As he turned to Chapter 1, 'Love Can Be Kept Only By Being Given Away', and began searching for sections bracketed as relevant, he suddenly sat bolt upright as he came upon a paragraph which read "To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own soul. Such love cannot seem to be love unless it pretends to seek the good of the one loved. But since it actually cares nothing for the truth, and never considers that is may go astray, it proves itself to be selfish. It does not seek the true advantage of the beloved or even our own. It is not interested in the truth, but only in itself. It proclaims itself content with an apparent good: which is the exercise of love for its own sake, without any consideration of the good or bad effects of loving.""[i] So when I read the first, as I said, it is what I wanted. But then... I don't want someone to be obsessed with me. And then I read the next quote. A little disappointing realizing that to only want the love of another for the sake of your own is considered selfish... but it's true. We should want to GIVE love and that our beloved be successful at what he/she wants. As much as I want my husband to put me first, to treat me like a queen, so to speak, I must put his needs and wants first. Dr. Phil says the same thing now that I think about it. He says he wakes up every morning thinking 'what can I do to make Robin's life better today?' It is better, however, if both partners love each other in that same way. My husband doesn't even notice whether I'm in the bed when he gets up and goes to work (sometimes I've moved to the couch). And that's why I felt so much from the first quote. I feel like I'm missing so much. If I start being less selfish and more giving to him will he become less selfish? Well, I've tried it. It works a bit but not completely. I'm still a ways down on the list of his priorities. So many things I wish I had known many years ago. So many things I have learned from reading books... novels, not self-help books. Now if I can get the message across in my novel to people, I will feel accomplished.