The Purpose of Love

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Love and Marriage Preparation. What a fun topic! It’s actually really funny that I am learning about the technicality of those things since last week was a “meet the parents” week for me and my sweet boyfriend. I don’t know if that is lucky or not for you readers since you’ll get a lot of information and a lot of personal information from me this week since this stage of life and this time of life has been one of my favorites so far.  Who doesn’t love to feel loved? To feel accepted and wanted and in some ways have some ownership on someone that you care deeply for. I certainly do. Let me share a little first about my life before we get into the technicality.

I met my boyfriend almost exactly 11 months ago on the 4th of July at Rigby Lake. His friend asked me to take a picture of a group of him and his friends and him and I got to talking. I left, and he looked for me to ask for my number but couldn’t find me anywhere. 2 months later we met again at the restaurant I had just got a job at, he asked for my number, and we have been dating ever since. We have gone through a lot together and conquered the unconquerable long-distance relationship and have come out stronger and better together. It’s a pretty cute story if I do say so myself.

What is it that draws us to each other and what is this elusive “love” that everyone is looking for? What it comes down to is science. Chemicals in the brain that excite and intrigue. It comes down to sex and creation which our bodies are driven to do. And it comes down to culture, monogamy is what we do. I also think that there is more to it, but we can talk about that later.

I asked my grandfather this week about what dating was like when he was young, and he told me exactly what I expected to hear. It was roller-skating and going to the movies and everything that you would expect to see in a movie. This got me thinking about what has changed since then to make dating so different now than it was before. When I was in high school, you were only “dating” if you were exclusive with one person, not if you were going on dates with many different people. The order for dating and the progression in romantic relationships has changed over the years. It used to be that you met and went on many dates with many people until you found one that you wanted to be with, then you are exclusively dating, then you are in a courtship, engagement, and then finally married. What has changed? Now, we hang out with someone until we decide to date them, get engaged, and then married or cohabitate until we feel like we should do otherwise.

The first thing that I thought of that has changed is technology. Any conversation that you want to have can be had at any time and often in a way that takes the “human-ness” out of things. The next thing I thought of is because we have taken away the intimacy of conversations, there is no need to go on dates so instead we hang out. Even with my current boyfriend, we would spend a lot of time just making dinners or deciding to watch movies when we were trying to figure out if we wanted to be exclusive rather than going out to the movies or going out to dinner. While it has worked out for us, it has also taken us longer to get to know each other since that intimate one-on-one time was not happening at the beginning of our relationship.

This gets back to what I was saying at the beginning. What makes us drawn to each other, what is our purpose? Currently, society says that the purpose of having a life partner is for money and children and sex, but I think that what it comes down to is companionship. Someone to trust and respect you and be there for you when life is hard because life IS hard. Love appears to be a chemical thing, but when it all comes down to it, love is a feeling that bids friends and families and partners together so that we can all find happiness and feel like we belong. We all need to feel loved and accepted, that attachment is literally important for our proper development, and in the end, we all need to figure out that our purpose is to love and be loved.

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