Guest Post: Love – A Choice

DEMURE LEMUR

I’m very honoured to have been asked to write a Valentine’s Day post for Met Another Frog. That said I’m not quite sure if I’m the fittest bird for the occasion. The thing is I’m not really that much of a romantic. Love, I believe, is an agreement. Love is choosing. If you’re reading these lines with gooey eyed, cupid stricken scorn, please don’t get me wrong:  I’m not saying that love isn’t real. But reality, when you think about it, is composed of agreements posited.

Why is an inch an inch? Because we all agree that it is. Why is an apple called an apple? Because we agree that it’s an apple. Why does a loaf of bread cost a pound and thirty pence? Because that’s what people will agree to pay for it. Why can a few intrinsically useless scraps of metal be exchanged for a nourishing French stick? Because we all agree that the scraps of metal are not useless, but have value, regardless of the fact that you can’t eat them or wear them or build a house out of them. So reality, at base, is composed of agreements, and love is one of those agreements. Two people agree that they are in love, and they build their reality around that agreement, like a house is built around feet and inches.

Our modern idea of love –  the soul mate story, the eyes meeting from across a crowded room story –  is a fairly recent concept, stemming , arguably,  from the European courtly culture of the sixteenth century. And of course, it’s culturally specific. The idea of choosing a monogamous marital partner, of any race, sex or social class, at random, from anywhere in the world, is a modern Western construction. It’s a construction that I like, but I think I’d like it more if it didn’t come with a corollary – you can have anyone you like, from anywhere in the world, but you must be sure that he or she is The One. How will you know? Oh, you’ll know. You’ll feel it.

I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. It sounds suspiciously like makey-uppy tosh to me. Yet, when people ask me of my long distance lover – ‘Do you love him?’ –  I say yes. And I do love him. I love him more than garlic cheese chips from Luigi’s. I love him more than champagne bubble baths (although champagne bubble baths and my lover complement each other rather beautifully). He is the best man I have ever met. He’s the best partner I’ve ever had. He’s my best friend. ‘Aw’ I can hear the gooey-eyed, love bunnies sigh, ‘How sweet, how fluffy, how syrupy golden and bright’ – but wait, there’s more. In spite of the fact that I love my lover (more than gothic novels, more than turf fires, more than Joni Mitchell) I know that, should I choose, I could leave our love behind me, and in time, find love again with someone else.

And so to Valentine’s Day, the ostensible subject of this post. My lover doesn’t believe in the feast day of dear Saint Valentino. It’s commercial, he says. It’s a Hallmark Holiday, he says. You should show each other love every day, not just on one officially prescribed day a year, says he. I nod along in complete assent, sometimes even adding things like ‘You’re right. And really I don’t expect you to get my anything’. But thankfully my lover has known me long enough to be able to identify my obviously lying voice, so I’m not in the least bit worried I’ll be without treats come Sunday.

We’ll be together for V-day this year. My god-daughter is being christened, so I’m flying home to the West of Ireland. In fact, I’m on the aeroplane right now. The flight was delayed. There is a gargantuan man squished into the seat behind me and his mythically proportioned knees are digging into my back. Somewhere nearby there is a child farting (don’t ask me how I know it’s a child – I just do). I’m sandwiched between two suits, at least one of whom, I am sure, is surreptitiously stealing glances at my computer screen. Won’t he be embarrassed now? And when I land in Shannon airport, there will my waiting lover be. Flowers maybe. Kisses for sure.

While I’m giddy at the thought of my lover’s talking eyes and warm bed, I’m also a little nervous, because I know this has the potential to be a fairly heavy Valentine’s weekend. This is the weekend when my lover and I are planning to Talk with a capital T. Because the thing is, you see, I’ve begun to find the distance very difficult. It was always difficult, but lately, it’s, I don’t know, it’s just more difficult. I am, if I let myself be honest rather than putting on the show of bubbles to which I am accustomed, miserable without him. I am a weird kind of lonely. I mean, I have loads of amazing friends in London. I have a hip and happening social life. But I feel as though I’m only half living, like something’s always missing, like I am deferring my real happiness. I’m young; I’m outgoing; I’m doing something I love in a city I love surrounded by people I love. This should be the best time of my life. And it would be. If it weren’t for my relationship.

My lover and I live in a blurrily bounded limbo land. I am in London and he is in Galway. I’m studying for my PhD. He has two children and a business. We’ve been doing the distance for over a year, and it will be at least two more before I finish my doctorate. That’s two more years of not quite happy.  And then what? Well then, if I want the relationship to survive, I move home to the West of Ireland, marry my lover, and try (quite possibly in vain) to get a job at the one and only university in the West (a university which doesn’t even have a department in my subject area). I scrap my dreams of taking off for a year travelling, of volunteering in South America or India. I turn my back on all the post doctoral opportunities that might be presented to me in London or further afield. I go back to Galway. I go back there for love. There are worse places to go; there are worse reasons to go places.

My lover knows that I’m not happy, that I hate the distance and that missing him makes me crazy. He doesn’t want that. He loves me far more than I deserve to be loved. He wants me, but he also wants what’s best for me. He knows we can’t keep living in limbo. He thinks that we need to make plans. If we had plans, he believes, if we had a future that we could both agree to, it would be easier to be bright in the half-light. There would be something real to look forward to, something more than brief pockets of bliss in an expanse of interminable absence. He wants us to lie down in each other’s arms, and, in whispers, build a reality together – build it of the agreement that we love each other; of the agreement that, someday when life allows, we will travel together; of the agreement that we will have a home filled with wonderful books and pretentious DVDs;  that we will spend our Sundays playing chess and doing crosswords; that we will fight and slam doors and make up; that I will make fishcakes on every second Friday; that he’ll do the laundry and I’ll clean the bathroom; that we’ll come home to each other in the evenings and laugh and be happy; that we’ll sleep, always, curled up in each other’s arms. Love is an agreement, but you have to agree. Love is a choice, and nobody can make it for you.

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