Loving Just One Person Your Whole Life Is Impossible

Why do we walk away?

It seems simple enough.

You fall in love and express your undying love for each other.

When the relationship or marriage ripens, you process it rationally and pragmatically — allowing yourself some internal temptation but knowing you’d never dare act on it.

After all, you promised to love this person forever. And you might have kids, a mortgage, car payments, and societal pressure to stay together….forever.

So why do more than half of us walk away from what seems the perfect arrangement — two people building a life together with an “It’s us against the world,” attitude?

It’s not natural to love only one person to the exclusion of everyone else

Have you ever been to a party where you’re attracted to literally every person in the room?

Of course, that’s lust, but lust can turn into love, right?

We like to think we can differentiate between lust, passion, romance, and love, but we really cannot.

We follow our instincts and attractions where they lead us.

Nobody claims once they’re married they no longer have temptation, they use self-control to avoid acting on those impulses…or they don’t.

What’s the reason?

Most states have evolved, but for many years a couple had to provide a legal reason to divorce — adultery, domestic violence, abuse.

Now, most are uncontested where nobody is blamed for the breakup and a judge tries to divide things up as fairly as possible.

There doesn’t have to be an actual reason.

But is there one?

Perhaps we set goals too high in marriages and can never quite reach the bar, then feel disillusioned, depressed, and want out.

Telling someone you love or hate them are just words. If we marry someone, at least on some level, we love them.

Sometimes we react too impulsively when the going gets tough and run away.

Sometimes we stay too long, realizing after years we’d prefer to be alone or potentially find someone else.

Love or lust

Our impulsive brains will always have difficulty appreciating what we have, while at the same time, craving more.

This is why so many couples at least tell each other they’d like to remain friends after breaking up. Perhaps we subconsciously want to hedge our bets. What if we made a mistake, maybe the door can still remain open?

I’m certain if society decided it was acceptable to have many love partners, we’d have a husband or wife on every corner.

We’re constantly balancing our temptations and desires. Our left brain tells us not to do something because it’s stupid; our right brain tells us to go for it because we only live once.

Where we land is an eternal mystery — but largely in our control.

Make the best of your decision

Each person has their own limits as to how devoted they can be to someone for whom they’ve promised to love for life.

Every marriage has trying times, so how do you know when to call it quits.

You don’t.

We all know couples who are in a constant state breaking up or divorcing, getting back together, then threatening to break up again. When we see this we’re witnessing their left and right brain arguing in real-time.

They don’t know what to do from one minute to the next — they seem to be at the mercy of their hormones, emotions, over-analysis, insecurities, and fear.

For me, having been divorced twice, while I have occasional regret of what could have been, I rarely look back.

Why didn’t my marriages last forever? Because the two of us decided we’d be better off going our separate ways than staying together.

Once we followed through with our decision to part, there was no sense in second-guessing or beating ourselves up.

Did we do the right thing?

We’ll never know. But I insist on being optimistic about the future. That’s what makes life worth living, all the possibilities.

Summary

We know we’re really two creatures in one — an animal and an intelligent human being.

Reconciling the two is damn near impossible for most of us.

The animal in us loves to seek fresh and exciting adventures which include having wild, uninhibited sex with people.

Our human side knows having sex is a biological function while partnering with someone and building a life together is what makes us intelligent.

Whether or not we choose to be moral, ethical, and devoted is a little like debating whether we humans have free will.

I don’t know if there’s some higher power mapping out our every move, but we decide whether to unzip our pants or not — we have that much free will.

Am I suggesting we’re all just a bunch of horny animals and we should stop torturing ourselves trying to stay with just one person for life? No.

Am I insinuating only intelligent humans have the self-control to avoid unzipping their pants whenever they feel like it? No.

Loving just one person your whole life Is impossible unless you insist on it.

And insisting on it is a very personal decision.

Whatever decision we make, loving someone deeply, is the greatest gift we can ever give — or get — whether it’s for a day….or a lifetime.

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Previously Published on medium

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