Love means wanting the best for someone. It does not mean putting them in a compromising situation, or expecting them to sneak around and live a double life so you can have time together. It does not mean hurting them willfully by forcing them to choose between family and them. They’re all the things that people who have affairs do. And the excuse? They’re ‘in love.’
But I can’t help thinking it sounds more like selfishness because they are more concerned with what they want and getting their way rather than what is best for the other person, and selfishness is not love. In fact it’s almost the opposite of love. Selfishness is all about getting what I want and getting it now. It was selfishness and greed which is only an offshoot of selfishness that caused our world economic situation as people tried to get what they wanted by cutting corners.
It is selfishness that sees parents give it to their kids because they want peace and quiet rather than taking time to teach, train and discipline them. It is selfishness that sees people want the bigger house and better car and so need two incomes to live what they call ‘a good life.’ Selfishness is at the root of most of society’s problems: adultery, murder, materialism, robbery, drugs, and alcoholism. It is selfishness that causes affairs and splits families. The person doesn’t feel they are being valued enough or treated well enough and so they go looking elsewhere.
Now, I might have a simplistic view of life and love and no doubt many will say I have but how often do those who have affairs, later want to come back to the one they were originally married to the one they once claimed to love? And the person they had supposedly been ‘in love with’ is cast off like an old coat just the way their spouse was initially. And it all happens because they were ‘in love.’
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