Love Ideology

by Monique Milla

The stories we share often include a lot of narrative on how we extricate

important moments in our life. Moments and synopsis of memories as embarrassing
and life worthy as we may remember it, but still we carry it in our hearts and
continue to treasure and grow with them as we get older. We share a part of
ourselves to any one we meet (sometimes unusually to a stranger), sometimes a soul
to soul conversation that left us speechless and continue craving for that same
feeling of belongingness and familiarity.

We can’t explain why we felt that way for her/ him and how it happened, but still
it did. And we - for the better part of it, as we grow aligned to the person; who we
tell our most sacred inner thoughts, show our most quirky, eclectic sides without
too much thought about whether the person would judge us, shower them with our
special time, and consequential talk to let them in our daily routine. And before you
know it, we become attached to this rather meaningful unique someone whom we
chose to let shared a secret pages and wrote them on our lives with special
connotation - a person who we share some physical and emotional appreciation, a
kind of trust and acceptance for one another’s flaws and misgivings.

A special bond indeed and we eventually called them our special person, (give each
other mushy-gooey nicknames) - as someone we loved. Perhaps wrote off for the
most part of it, a kind of love specially aligned to that same ideology we may or
could have said “lover”.

When in reality a lover or love can be described in many forms, translated into
many gestures and sometimes science co notates it to pheromones released in our
body. The measure of it is still transcendental and matched the face of our needs
and especially normal for us humans to experience from the first time that we
were born until our very last breath.
It is so magnificent and such a heartfelt experience to read in books and adore in
romance movies that sometimes I envied of sexual tension revered on Hollywood
romance, those buttered-up emotion’s written by songwriters and sang into the
industry of music.

The same way we still sing “Can’t help falling in love with You” which became the
biggest romantic song in the time of Elvis Presley (1960’s) and still be relevant to
our generation. And in the most part, the hopeless romantic in us thought we want
that, we hear a song and never the less we can’t help but relate to that same lyrics,
mourn with the actors, cry over unrequited love, feel the scene and sometimes the
words from a book leaping out from the pages -ripping our hearts out and sucking
our tears dry.

What I want to say is I never experienced that or I haven’t given love much
thought until I became 16. Maybe a late bloomer perhaps or thrown by the
distinction and question. Am I normal? Sure I’ve thrown on the words I love you
hear in there to a close friend but never to an extent of capsulated hopeless
romance and coming of age films that I have seen on the big screen. But maybe we
over indulged in those romantic scenes exaggerated by the Hollywood actors and
pretty great acting skills, idealization of “THAT” kind of heterosexual
relationships and character emotional development that we see on K- Dramas.

But then again maybe it’s just me.

Maybe the culprit was not all Hollywood, maybe it’s just me all along. And then the
preference came to view and that got me thinking, maybe love is not over
exaggerated, maybe drama and romance is not that bad. Maybe love is meant to be
the same way we love our pets, our dogs. But a lover itself runs deeper- Another
human being that cares, or has the same values, who do the same weird things we
do and we called it “love”. Maybe it is simple as that, maybe we over idealize, maybe
you're just picky, maybe you just have high standards, just be with him already “
wag ka nang maarte” you’ll fall for him eventually.
.. all those “maybe’s” but nobody ever told me. Life and love is everywhere and we
never really have to replicate love on a person, love doesn’t come face to face in
the form of romance cuddling, kissing , touching or the intimacy of sexual pursuit
of the body;where a person ruled by libido acts on it.

Maybe we go through these dating apps in hopes for that idealization of romance,
but our idealization gets thrown into the window once sexual intercourse is known,
and is given light into the context of those you swipe right and chatted with.

It could be replicated in movies but the feeling itself can only be translated into
those bits and pieces from movie scenes. Because we never experience it the same
way, each and every one of us differs from the love we know and give, differ from
how many lovers and kinds of love we receive. What kind of intimacy do we crave,
maybe that’s what makes it hard, it's hard to find someone whose on the same page
as you are, who marches to the beat of the same drum you hear. It’s such a
complex piece of subject that we talked about in our daily lives yet we do feel it
everywhere. Fall in love with sceneries , experiences, places we have never visited
before yet fell in love instantly.

I am here to tell you not to complicate yourself through labels and magnify every
little thing you thought you knew about love. But look through a bigger picture of
why we may fall in love. Let our questions be asked not through sexual impulse, let
our series of interaction be filled with genuine conversation. Let's all be empathic
human beings because it is already a messed-up world we live in. Just for once in
the topic of the messy dating world, let's all be humans, not ruled by libido but
with the desire to have a “lover” sharing a thousand cherished mementos in our
lifetime.