Can You Love Forever?

To love is to touch the infinite and, at the same time, to discover that the arms never reach it, no matter how much they extend. That is the great paradox of love: it is experienced as eternal, but it ends. It ends, but it never dies. In loving we discover a new logic, in which everything and nothing constantly flirt with each other.

The verb “last” can be imprecise to talk about love. It is a word that is better suited to objects rather than feelings. This, because loving is a dynamic reality that changes, modifies, mutates and metamorphoses over time. But if it lives all these processes, it is precisely because it persists, because it does not die, but changes.

If we talk about loving children, parents, siblings, friends or dreams, the degree of stability is usually greater. Another thing is when it comes to loving a partner. In particular, if it is done from the perspective of the ideal of romantic love, which is static and unchanging forever.

Romantic love does usually end relatively quickly. It is the one who says: “eternal love lasts three months.” It is the most intense phase, but also the most temporary of love.

Loving is an infinite moment

Let’s talk first about loving your partner because it is usually one of the most problematic affections for almost everyone. We are heirs to a romantic idea of ​​love, which was built between the 18th and 19th centuries and which continues to gravitate within culture.

That perspective, in turn, is the daughter of the idealism that has so influenced the West. It is the one that tells us about “half oranges” and about loves that live happily ever after.

And there really is a moment of falling in love in which anyone could swear that it will be an eternal feeling. We cannot imagine how that way of loving our partner could change. In that state of near madness, we lose, without meaning to, our sense of proportions. That is why we promise it and we swear it: it will be forever.

Expectations and disappointments

That kind of love generates pretty high expectations. Although the promises and oaths do not say so specifically, it seems as if what was offered and what was expected was to maintain a state of fullness and a strong presence of romantic love between the two.

It is from these oversized expectations that the first disappointments come, because loving is a feeling that does not cancel out our miseries, pettiness and limitations. Sooner rather than later all those realities emerge that destroy the romantic ideal that we had forged before.

Ultimately, falling in love becomes an obstacle to love. It is true that it feels delicious, but it can also raise the tone of our emotions so much that it prevents us from clearly seeing the greatness and restrictions of what we feel. If that obstacle is overcome without trauma, the true path to love begins.

Love is like a tree: eternal

The tree metaphor is very lucky.  It is enough to see the way in which it is born and grows from a small seed to realize that the destiny of everything that has life is to expand and reach heaven.

The mature tree has its flowers, it has its fruits, and it gives new seeds so that all that is can be planted elsewhere and a new growth, a new story, begins. So is love. Once it germinates, nothing finishes it. It will continue to grow and bear fruit, to start the cycle again forever. As it expands, you know if that love is like an oak, a cherry or some different species.

You can love forever

By truly loving, we do it forever. Parents love their children and children their parents, even if they are not together, even if they have died. Friends are loved in their bright times and in their dark times. We love the brothers and the family, despite any vicissitudes. You love yourself even when you hate yourself. The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.

Loving the couple also writes an endless story. With everything and the breakups, divorces or abandonments, who has been in our hearts genuinely, will always have a place there. Each of these loves writes at least one line in a story that is irreversible: the one that leads to the deepest paths of who we are and what we have ceased to be.