ON ROMANTIC LOVE
0.
The problem with our world today is not too much unconstrained desire, it’s too weak of desire in the first place.
Meaningful love has been nearly wiped from the face of the earth.
If you want meaningful love you must not do meaningless things.
I.
We desire those who draw us in by their beauty.
The wise man sees beauty at every level of a person.
The shallow man sees it only on the surface, and that for a passing second.
The fool imagines it has no surface, and doesn’t understand beauty at all, or what a human is, composed of body and soul.
Love is the uniting force. It draws toward the objects of our love. We desire to see them preserved in their goodness, and to grow where they have not goodness yet.
If you wouldn’t want a child by a person, don’t pursue them.
If in dating you come to realize you wouldn’t want children by that person, stop seeing them immediately.
The one who drags their feet in doing what their heart is telling them has a weak soul and no sense for virtue.
The one who cannot ask the questions that discern for them what their heart is feeling is like a blind man without any thing to guide them.
Would I want children by this person?
Would I want as many children as could come by this person? Or do I just want one or two?
If you would limit the fruits of your desire then your desire is weak and not worth pursuing.
What if this person did you dirty? Would you run away to the first person you could that would take you in?
The weak person jumps from one person to another, but the worthy person doesn’t run from their pain or try to cover over it. This goes for women as well as men.
Before you marry a person you should be able to say that you would devote your life to them even if they went rogue on you and abandoned your marriage in tragic fashion. This goes for women as well as men.
If you wouldn’t persevere in virtue at the thought of humiliation then you’re not ready to love in a way that will conduce toward a marriage worth having. This goes for women as well as men.
If a person humiliating you would produce rage instead of sorrow, you don’t like that person in the first place.
If your sorrow would make you do desperate things, then you won’t inspire the one whom you love.
Another person’s sins don’t justify you to sin—if you can’t recognize that you’re not capable of meaningful love yet. This goes for women as well as men.
II.
Meaningful love is either infinite or it’s not meaningful at all.
If you sent a message to your love and they didn’t ever respond, would you still say the same thing?
If your message would be true and dignified regardless of them responding, then you’ve said the right words.
If you’d take back your message if they didn’t respond to it, then you sent them a message in desperation and its substance is meaningless.
If you wouldn’t be excited by a child coming from your love with a person, you’re not ready to love that person.
If there’s a number where you’d stop the children from coming thereafter, your desire is weak and worthy of nothing.
When a woman truly desires a man, they don’t want one child by them, they want as many as they could have. When a woman sees a male superstar, their desire is not curbed to “just 2 or 3 children.”
Love desires to be replicated infinitely, and no number of children would dampen the love of one who loves rightly.
When a man truly desires a woman, they don’t want just one child by them, they want as many as they could have. When a man looks upon a female superstar, their desire is not curbed to “just 2 or 3 children.”
They would want as many children as they could have with that person.
If a man has gotten to the place where he thinks that no matter who the woman is they wouldn’t want as many children by them as could come—then that man has killed the love in their soul and they have nothing of substance to give.
If a woman has gotten to the place where she thinks no matter who the man is they wouldn’t want as many children by them as could come—then that woman has killed the love in their soul and they have nothing of substance to give.
But every man when he sees a woman of true beauty, desires them infinitely—and every woman, when she sees a man of true beauty, desires them infinitely.
Those who cut off their children cut off their love, their marriage is dead already.
Those who plan when they’ll have children and when they won’t, their marriage is dead already.
III.
When you’re talking to someone, the great person can avoid the temptation to play games.
Waiting to respond, or cloaking your actual desire in indifference, or portraying one thing when you feel another, comes from a weak person—it’s all games.
But the great person can say what they mean and right away. Every message they send they would say the same thing even if the person never responded.
If they never responded and you’d feel ashamed, you have no dignity in the message you sent.
If the other person playing games forces you to play games, you don’t yet have the strength for virtue yet.
If the idea of a child coming from your intimacy with your partner scares you, you do not love that person and should not be with them in the first place.
If the idea of a child coming from your intimacy with your partner excites you, you are ready to make a commitment tomorrow.
Don’t put off for two years what you would do tomorrow.
If you wouldn’t do it tomorrow then not even two years will suffice to prepare you.
But if you need a few months, that’s reasonable, and you’re on the right track so long as you see it through when the time comes.
Intimacy that can’t make a child is no intimacy at all—it is tantamount to jerking off and a disgrace to love.
If you make fake love to your partner you have no partner at all. Your relationship is already dead.
If you really desire someone, you want things that are weighty and meaningful.
If you have forsaken desire, you want things that are light and easy to cast aside.
The more you desire a person, the more you want weight and meaning.
Many people are seeking meaning today but they do one thing after another that is meaningless.
You can’t use birth control or contraception and have meaning in your love—it’s no wonder so many people that are in relationships still feel like their life is need of more meaning.
Making love into the void is utterly meaningless. The one you do that with will never have meaning to you, no matter how hard you try.
If you make a child with someone you don’t love, that child comes into the world without love. What sorrow that child must face forever—that’s on you.
If you kill a child before they’re born, the last act of their parents was an act of hatred—what sorrow that child must face forever.
IV.
A promiscuous society isn’t a society with too much love, it’s a society without the courage to love with weight and meaning.
If you don’t want weight with someone, avoid the temptation to use them as a means of keeping you from being bored.
Would you still say what you’ve said if no one ever heard it? If they never responded to what you’ve said? Then don’t say it. If you would anyways—then what you’re saying has substance and meaning—your words will move hearts.
When the heart loves, it loves infinitely—but infinity is scary to us finite people. That’s probably why so few people achieve any semblance of meaningful love.
So many people with meaningless love today.
They have great jobs, awesome homes, a whole lot of friends—but their love is poverty and their lives are worthy of pity.
So many people looking for love that can’t find it because they can’t avoid the temptation to indulge meaningless love. They’re left alone and can’t find anyone that fits—because no human soul can fit into weak meaninglessness.
Desperation comes when a person is incapable of suffering long—the single person is often desperate because they’re unwilling to suffer.
They idolize Buddhism because it tells them they can transcend suffering.
They idolize atheism because it tells them that suffering is random and not the just consequence of their desperate indulgences.
V.
Meaningful romantic love is a virtue—two people in vice can never have it.
If you don’t have meaningful romantic love, your inability to resist temptation is the primary culprit.
Meaningless sex is a temptation—whether you’re married or not.
The more you give into it, the weaker your desire grows.
If you want to lift heavy things, you must practice by picking up as much weight as you can.
If you want to lift heavy things and you only ever pick up light weight, you not only won’t be able to get to where you want, your delusion will block you from seeing your way forward. Ten years will go by and you’ll have gotten nowhere.
Many today are crippled in love only in the beginning by their weakness, but ultimately it is because of their own delusion.
Their inability to resist temptation produced desperation, and desperation produced regret.
But regret is painful, and so the same thing that led them to that pain of regret—their unwillingness to endure the initial pain, that then produced a desperate act, and with that desperate act produced regret—pushes them to avoid their regret anew. They then give in to the temptation to avoid suffering all over and produce only more desperation.
In short order they lie about all of it to themselves and the result is delusion.
Delusion is the temptation that comes to the one who’s given into the preliminary temptations of lust and weakness.
First are the temptations of the body, then of the soul.
Don’t give in to the temptation to delude yourself and you’ll begin to be able to take on more pain.
As you begin to be able to take on more pain, you’ll have a better chance of resisting temptation—those who resist temptation grow in dignity.
Only the dignified have meaningful romantic love.
Meaningful love is profoundly just.
Don’t die without meaningful love—your eternal fate will be grimmer than you can fathom.
Seek meaningful love—God works all things for good for those who love Him. +
Thanks for another great article