I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.
~John Green The Fault in our Stars p. 75
I’m completely with John on this one. I know that most people don’t have that experience, but should is an optimistic word. Loyalty to someone is a beautiful thing. It’s powerful when it’s reciprocated.
Shawn L. Bird 
and crippling when unrequited, but healing eventually after being let free
It would be nice if it wasn’t just ‘healing’ but somehow empowering.
sometimes it is, and like the pruning of grapevines, the healing may grow beyond the former capacity, and having suffered pain from the lack of shared feelings, when another love is found that loves reciprocally, the love may be treasured with more fervor and give more passion for living life I imagine only because of having loved in vain and suffered during the time it took to be freed from the painful hold it had on the heart… I don’t know for sure what I am talking about though, only half there myself, and basing the rest on a conversation I had earlier in the evening with a friend who basically said as much, only less poetically and with fewer words… lol
You know, this is a premise of the character of Ben in my novel series, Grace Awakening. You don’t hear it overtly from him in the first 2 books, but the 2 in progress (doing their ‘sit’ between editing) told from his perspective reflect his experience. He lost his first love (i.e. the famous Orpheus and Eurydice) so he is more desperate to hold onto Grace.
Cool, sounds like a believable character!
True love. Hmm. Sometimes it wins and blesses you with a true life. It has kept me alive, nurtured me, and given me both the space and confidence to do what I do. My gratitude is boundless. Nothing is perfect except everything together.
Lovely sentiment.
True love is ENDLESS AND EVER FLOWING—-fresh, pious, crystal clear and celestial. Allah is love and we all are from Him, of Him so love is infinte and divine
It is also an action- patience, kindness, etc. If it’s only words, it’s meaningless, even if it’s infinite. Loving one’s enemy means being kind and considerate…
very true
His statement is very idealistic. We live in a society where that rarely happens. Most people my are divorced, separated and decided they will never marry again or commit again, me being one of them. I go by the adage, Once burned, twice shy. Movies, books, magazines make romantic love the end all and be all of life. As for me personally once my ex- traded me in for a younger better model, seven years ago I was forced to get in touch with myself. I’ve had a few dates since then but I’m in relationship with myself, I validate myself. There is no Prince Charming or Knight in Shining Armor. That’s all just a fantasy that most women were brought up to believe until reality sets in. Once I realized what was out there as opposed to what I could do for myself and by myself I dropped out of the dating game and have not looked back. I consider being Single the best of my life.
It’s certainly much harder to disappointment yourself.
The quote is actually from a character whose girlfriend has just broken up with him. Their mantra was “always” but his cancer was too difficult for her to deal with, and she left. The character says these lines while in the hospital after losing his second eye to cancer. He grieves her loss more than the loss of his eyes. She betrayed him by saying she’d love him forever, and then abandoning him. It’s disloyalty that hurts most.
Unfortunately marriage vows like most romantic promises cannot be kept. “A promise is a promise, at least that’s what they say. Welcome to reality, they’re broken everyday.” Human love is mercurial and comes with conditions. As soon as something better comes along that person is gone.
That’s certainly not a universal truth. If it was, there would be none of us who have been married for decades, right? According to Stats Canada, the divorce rate here is between 35-42%. Even if 40% of marriages end in divorce, that means 60% of them last. There’s something encouraging in that: the majority of marriages will last.
There are some exceptions. My parents were married for 40 years but they were different. The divorce rate in the U.S. is probably higher than Canada. Also even if people stay married it does not mean they are faithful. I know a lot of cheating men and women. They stay together only for the children. As one guy on my job puts it, “My wife is married but I’m not.” Adultery is universal. So are STDs. I do admit I’m jaded, cynical and a skeptic. I don’t believe in true love. To me that’s a fairy tale. Only a handful of my friends who married 30 years ago are still together. Most people separate or break-up.
“My wife is married, but I’m not?” SERIOUSLY? Does his wife know he’s ‘not married?” That is a first class jerk.
She probably knows he cheats. Most women have that 6th sense that their spouse is up to no good but they have a teenage daughter. Couples stay together for the sake of their kids plus our job provides benefits and insurance. It may seem odd but money and financial stability keep couples together especially if there are kids involved. You need that income. Or sometimes they just don’t care. As long as the man brings home money and takes care of the kids a lot of women don’t care what the man does. There was another guy in my workplace who was openly cheating with a younger woman, well since they never had children she separated from him. Sad to say but cheating is now the new norm for both men and women because I know several female co-workers who cheat on their husbands. It’s on the job, at church, in the neighborhood. Fidelity means very little in today’s society.
Very true – great book too.
True Love is a very difficult thing to capture, even though it may be universal. It is easy to lose touch with the loving spirit we have inside us. Sometimes staying with someone solely because you committed to it in the past, could be the very thing that blocks you from perceiving what would be true love for you now. Many kinds of love need to be distinguished. The love of loyalty, the love of kindred spirits, the love of display for the sake of kids. And then there is a personal love for life, not necessarily connected to another person at all. True love means different things to different people, and so the generic nature of terms and words, as so often, can cause us to lose sight of the real phenomena when it is experienced first hand. In my own way I believe in it, but I’m not sure what I think of it as, would agree with anyone else’s idea of it.
Now that is an interesting notion. I suppose in that case, so long as your partner agreed with your perspective, you could carry on together and call whatever you create ‘true.’
I suppose that could work yes, though many people have very fixed notions of things
John Green is a god. A cold and heartless one at times (e.g., AFIOS), but a god nonetheless…
Nothing cold and heartless in AFIOS, to my mind, just a powerful look at an impossible situation. George RR Martin is the one who is cold and heartless! I had to stop reading Game of Thrones.
My daughter is trying to get me to watch GoT, but I refuse. Heartlessness is too common. Give me John Green any day. 😉
It would be fine if GRRM didn’t just kill people out of the blue. If he kills off enough characters you love, there’s no point reading any more.
So my daughter says…Very interesting, an author who doesn’t care about character attachment…Makes me interested in his personal psychology… Is he brilliant, or a psychopath, or both? 😉
I think he’s just reflecting what really happened to those in the royal circles in medieval societies. Death could come suddenly from unexpected sources, but it’s certainly frustrating!
Yes, history is not as tidy as logic would desire…He is probably more true to human nature, if not to human desire!
If it is true love – it will last a lifetime…
And perhaps beyond.
I like that thought…