Is love really “ain’t enough”?

We may not know all the lyrics, but we know the song. It replays in the minds of the broken-hearted and confuses romantic hopefuls. “There’s a reason why people don’t stay where they are. Baby, sometimes just love ain’t enough.” Sing it, Patty Smyth.

Many of us grew up seeking the fairy tale love often described in songs, movies and novels. We follow popular notions like “love is all we need,” “love conquers all” and “all you need is love.” This concept is romantic, but is love the sole ingredient needed to carry couples through hard times?

I’m not so sure.

Our culture is obsessed with love – the feeling of it, the hunt for it and the despair of losing it. In the past (and even in other cultures today), couples came together because of arranged marriages and the merging of lands or kingdoms. Today, we see love as the root of relationships. It has moved from a secondary importance to the foundation on which we build futures. This has also led us to inevitable confusion and disappointment.

If love alone creates undeniable happiness, then I question where elements like timing, values and maturity fit into the equation. When two people love each other, but are at different places with any of these factors, we expect love to fill the gaps. When this doesn’t happen, our relationships get harder, doubt screams louder and our notions of love conquering all spin us into downward disaster.

Relationships fail, and when they do we reason that our ex-lover simply was not “the one.” We turn these former partners into enemies, blame them for the relationship’s demise then continue our search for the perfect mate. But, might it be possible that our values were just in different places, or our maturity at different stages? We know life does not always go as planned, so it seems we should not expect love to be different.

Perhaps it’s not that we chose the wrong love. Maybe we just found love at the wrong time.

We picture our ideal relationships and long to find the head-over-heels love we see in the media. I am not beyond believing true love exists, but I hesitate to say it will keep couples together when partners fail to listen, refuse compromise or never spend time together.

I still believe in fairy tales, but I believe in fairy tales of our time – the ones where love lasts through daily chores, career changes and personal losses. I could drop my Rapunzel hair for a white knight to climb a building and save me from a life of solitude, but where would we go after riding into the sunset? A horse cannot gallop forever, and I would eventually get bored of the ride even if it could. At some point, we would have to dismount, make dinner and settle into a life of routine.

We may have to journey through heartache to find these modern-day versions of happily ever-after. Until we do, Patty’s 1992 rock ballad will blast through iPod speakers while I freely sing along from the highest balcony of my castle window.

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Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash