Quantities of Love

Love is quite the crazy concept. It just kind of happens to us. We give little snippets, sometimes even big chunks, of our heart away. And if you’re like me, those pieces are gone for good. I believe that if you ever truly love someone, a piece of you will love them forever…

There are so many different kinds of love. The love I have for my children is vast and ferocious. I would literally kill for them. It is so powerful that it overwhelms me sometimes, making me cry. The love for each of my children is equally strong. Yet, slightly different. I think that because they are such different people, the love that goes toward them cannot be the same.

The love we have for our parents in return is one that ebbs over the course of our lives. When we are children, our parents are our all. Then slowly during the teenage years an emotional detachment starts until finally we are ready to leave them behind. Which is a good thing- if children loved their parents as much as they loved them, nobody would ever move out and start their own family. A child’s love for their parents must be prepared for loss one day- it is the natural way of life.

Sibling love is just bizarre. Even if you don’t really like them as people you cannot help but love them as your brothers/ sisters. It is mostly stronger than the love for your friends, keeping families together. It is not a love we choose, rather an instinctual love.

The love of our partners is voluntary. It is the most fragile, but in a way also the most valuable. I consciously chose to spend the rest of my life with my husband. I selected him to be the father of my children and to make a home with me. There is no love that is more (s)elective. It is vulnerable. We constantly have to work on it to keep it alive. All the work that we put into our relationship will hopefully pay off in the end. When the children have left the house and the friends have all moved away, my husband will hopefully be the one who will still be by my side. That would be my happily ever after…