What Happens When Love Gets a Makeover?

Are we done yet? We have given culture a Sharpie and let it mark all over Love to make it fit our grocery list of appetites. Progress is a good thing until it fundamentality changes what is truly good into something that is not. Worth the War asks for a seat at the cultural table where the concept of Love is being shaped. We want a vote on the best ways to educate and prepare to Love well. To do that, it can’t hurt to define some terms. What is modern Love anyway? Why it is so bad? After all, modern medicine is a good thing, right? If modern technology is a good thing but why not modern Love? 

Here it is in black and white: Modern Love is what is left after the narcissistic influence of popular culture gives Love a makeover. 

Love as a Luxury

Narcissism is defined as an ‘excessive or erotic self-interest’.  It’s the “all about me” mindset on every level. Modern Love is identified by who it serves. Marriage was once considered a partnership protecting from the realities of life.  Whatever life throws at you, you can survive better if you have a partner, someone to cover your back. The luxury of freedom and romance crept into the concept of Love more recently. Now it is more about feelings than the reality of commitment.  Let’s quickly admit that romantic notions are not all bad. We don’t need to dig too deep to learn that most generations worked to have food daily and survive natural and political disasters and diseases.  The fact we can dream about Love and romance is truly a luxury. It is a great time to be alive and a great time to Love!  We have the time to enjoy the leisure and ponder deep questions, so, as Howard Jones wisely sang, “What is  Love anyway?”

Words Shape Our Reality

Love is a tricky word, both a noun and a verb. The Love we focus on at WorththeWar is a verb. Yes, Love is often described as warmth, attraction, or even attachment. I think this fact is a major contributor to the damage done to hearts daily in our world.  If we define it as a feeling, we are beholden to our emotional state to define our attachments. We ask, What is Modern Love anyway? We are left pointing to Love as a feeling, an emotion, a desire.  Talk about danger. What can cause your day to crash?  When your favorite sports team lost? , you missed your favorite store’s sale?   Our mental state can turn on a dime, and do we want our relationships to hinge on that?  While the emotional experience of Love is pleasant and important, I submit the central notion that Love is not a noun, secondarily an adjective, but rather a full-on verb! It is NOT what we experience but rather what we DO!

We can’t base healthy love and relationship on feelings.

Love as a Verb

What does it matter if we consider Love to be a verb?  It means we can’t fall into’ Love, but rather we choose it. Our happiness is not based on the chemicals awash in our brains but on the perspective of how we consider the person we choose to walk through life with. It means we aren’t under the spell of Love. Rather, we DO Love all day long. Pouring Love out, rather we are feeling it or not. Trusting and finding that when we pour out, feelings tend to follow. Where emotional love is based on what we cannot control, Verb Love is based on everything we DO control-ur commitment, choice, actions, thoughts, and desire to build something beautiful with another human. Someone who approaches things the same way. 

If The verb: Love is the cake, make the noun/adjective Love the icing. It also gives us the power to experience an attraction to someone without being required to show them, Love.  To choose to Love under the umbrella of wisdom. Love would no longer be what happens to us but what we willfully share with whom we choose.

If We Know it’s Not Working, Why Do We Keep Doing it?

If Modern Love is so vulnerable, why is it our culture’s approach? Simple, it’s all we see. If we turn a screen on, any screen, what do we see? Reality TV is a sexual need meeting. Sitcoms are pushing an ideal love everyone is seeking, but if you don’t ‘feel it,’ you are doomed. Movies are 90 minutes of indoctrination that Love is mystical and elusive. Or, if you don’t feel it from your toes to the top of your head, it’s just not love, and you are doomed to mediocrity. I mean, it’s a great form of art and entertainment, but let’s be honest, it hardly prepares us to find and keep a healthy Love relationship! Look at music’s favorite tune, Love and sex, as a form of conquest.  Its chorus sings we will be destroyed in the process.  After all, it’s just sex, no harm, no foul.  Let’s not forget how your partner makes you look and rank and what they bring to your bottom line. The image of Love has become as important as the reality of Love.

Love as an Image

We are all trained to think Love is only as good as what it gets you. Trying to find the perfect partner based on the short-term benefits. We can see how that plays out, right?  You have the perfect partner, they check all the boxes, and you are euphoric until life steps in. Reality has a way of striping us all down naked. There will be a season we will have nothing to offer. We struggle with illness, exhaustion, and depression from being overworked and overstressed; what does Modern Love do, then? If it’s based on what you get, it disappears. You can’t figure out what changed, but it’s gone. Love based on what you get will never last; it will change or end.

Self or Other

It all boils down to ONE word: Self.  Either you will feed yourself or pour it out. I am not advocating self-harm here. We all understand we need to practice self-care. When it comes to Loving others, it’s got to be about how we freely give, or it cannot grow.

Modern Love will put self first; Real Love will put others first.  It will pour out; it will willingly serve. In every corner of your world, you can find examples. People who take, people who give. Look at the life they live. Which one has happiness? It’s almost always the givers. When we stop pushing our agenda and trying to get what we think we need, we get this transcendent surprise called peace. We can give up parts of ourselves without disappearing.

The greatest lie of Modern Love is that we will be happy when we get what we want.  But truth laughs at that. We are most happy when we Love what we have. When we bask in the contentedness of what is. In Loving like this, we will build a shelter that withstands the storms of life. The real kind of Love worth having is rooted instead in what is given away. Find a heart to build and live with, and you will have all you need.

What is Modern Love Anyway?

What is Modern Love Anyway? It’s what happens when you take a verb and turn it into an adjective and hope no one will notice that it leaves you with nothing.

Thanks for stopping in! For more thoughts on how we can Love in healthier ways, check out https://worththewar.com/is-dating-helping-or-hurting-our-relationships-healthy-love/