“You don't know true love until you have been married for 20 years”- Anon

Symbols and expressions of love

True love is a weighted concept in this matter and must be examined carefully. Love is not a certain term owing to the fact that is expressed in many ways. Erotic love, familial love, love between friends or infatuated love highlights the ambiguity of this term. Certainly, within the context of marriage and the family there is a background in which true love can flourish- that is, love without conditions. A decision to accept the other in spite of the frictions. However, true love can be experienced or know outside of this context, illustrating the spectrum of ‘loves’ that exist. All of which forms part of the human makeup and contributes to identity and the like. Society, too, in the broadest sense experiences love of a different nature which is important in this issue.

Family life with all its negative attributes such as expenses, interpersonal tensions and shared environments forms the basis of any culture. The notion of the family has always been impalpable in terms of common qualities, but that has changed even more radically in the last 30 years in this country. The experience of true love can be experienced outside of this. A friendship that starts in childhood in which another is accepted and time is spent together is very real to these people, and even if it is not called love, this is how it is experienced. The absence of conditions makes true love possible, but it is not necessarily constrained to the realm of marriages that last longer than the average. Instead, true love is experience in a continuum of events that all contribute to our sense of well-being and the sense of having been loved.

The ‘love’ that exists in society plays out differently to that in the family context. There is the love of country and the love of symbols. There is the collective love of places such as Lone Pine that speaks of a history of patriotic love and sacrifice. This love is experienced in the nation-wide silence that marks the occasion. Love in this sense admires the virtues and dedicated service that contributes to the make-up of society. The crucial point here is that society loves without a sense of time that has passed, but with the symbols that remain. Thus, just as in marriage the symbols of love through the faithfulness to the service of the children, love is known in the points that show it as well as in the memory of those who experience it. Such memories may even lead to the individual and society on to greater and more dedicated love.

It is clear therefore that love without conditions relies on the interpretation of the symbols that remain as a memory or as a action in the individual. Marriage that ideally fosters such love is not the sole source of it.