About a year ago, I read an article that I felt very strongly about; its content and its meaning stuck with me. Today, that article resurfaced on one of my social media feeds and so I've decided to take another look at it.
The article is titled "The Smarter And More Independent You Are, The Harder It Is To Find Love" and can be found here for anyone who is interested in reading through the entire thing. This article from Elite Daily.com is written by a contributor just like me, so I want to genuinely take a second to appreciate the fact that they provided content that both inspired my writing and generated a conversation among other people.
Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly disagree with everything I read in this article.
There are two subsections within the article that are titled: "Independence — more than intelligence — ruins our relationships" and “'Independence compatibility' still isn’t enough. Your intelligence will make things difficult".
In a nutshell, the first section reads:
"When two people enter a relationship, they give up some of their independence in order to have a loving and caring partnership. And it’s a beautiful thing — it really is. But the more independent you are, the more likely you are to feel suffocated . . .When one person is significantly more independent than the other, the relationship is going to become messy. The least independent person is going to try and cling on to the more independent as hard as he or she can, while the independent person will do his or her best to get some breathing room."
My response: Not...quite.
Look, I've been in relationships before where I have felt suffocated - very suffocated. And left because of it. However, I've also been in relationships where I've had my independence taken advantage of, and the other person abused the fact that we weren't always together and used that as an opportunity to be unfaithful. I've seen both sides. However, I will say this: We independent people are independent for a reason - whatever reason that may be - and when someone tries to tell us that we need to stay put...it doesn't exactly go over very well.
The catch though, is that independence is merely a result of perspective. If someone who values their freedom, their individuality and ultimately their independence, ends up in a relationship with someone who they want to be with, want to spend their free time with, and want to stay with, their independence can be easily achieved within that relationship.
The section following that sums up to this:
"[F]or some reason, we don’t write a lesson plan for love. Loving is arguably the most important thing people do in life, but we don’t teach our kids how to do it properly. So what happens when the most intelligent people on this planet experience love? They question it. They want to better understand it, explore it and test it. . .Because love centers on emotion, it’s not easy for an intelligent person to find and keep it. If you’re looking for a theory on love, you simply need to find one — or you need to accept the truth that you aren’t willing to face. Love isn’t magical on its own. We make it magical. It’s all in our heads."
This guy seems a little grumpy.
People question the theory of love and how humans have evolved to manipulate it all the time. It's one of the more fascinating things for me, personally, to read and learn about. For what it's worth, he makes several valid points, one of which is that there is no way to "capture" love. There is no such thing as a professional lover (although that sounds like a damn good title to hold, right?) In other words, love is very perplexing, and what this author is trying to establish here is that there are two types of people in this world: those who just accept that they'll never understand something and roll with it, and those who accept that they don't understand something and make it their mission to figure out why.
But, does that mean that every person with an IQ over 100 is doomed to be confined in a small apartment surrounded by cats every weekend? Probably not. I'm not going to argue the fact that people (like me) who need to figure out and master every minute detail of something that they don't understand are going to find it difficult to embrace the intangibility of love. That is the aspect of love that must be learned and "taught to our kids" - in reference to the article. We need to teach ourselves and those influenced by us that love is something louder than any audible sound - there are forces out there that we can't explain. We have to be intelligent enough to understand and accept that there are things we can't logically comprehend.
I am writing, perhaps, from a different perspective than this contributor was - and so, coming from the aspect of someone who values their independence, it shouldn't mean that I must admit myself to feeling lonely, nor should I have to convince myself that I'm missing a much desired quality that a man would look for in me. I should not feel as though I have to trick my own mind and settle for just any ol' dude who just so happens to put up with the way I do stuff.
Seriously, anyone who views themselves as independent, ambitious, or intelligent should never feel like they need to worry about finding love in this world. And real love, when you're self-reliant, is more about the amount of trust that you've got built up between the two of you. In order to remain in a sense of sanity, you must be able to recognize that a relationship is not two people, it is not one person...it is an experience. And as such, it should be treated as though it is the pivot of both individual lives, where one person can run and jump while the other stays grounded to catch. It is about learning to appreciate the time you're not with your partner because the time that you are with them is when you lose yourself in the misty air of the present.
In order to be able to go your own way without needing to speak to the other person for a day or two, then come back without feeling any sort of emotional energy shift is a success based on honesty and respect, not intelligence or independence? When you find someone that you want to be with versus someone you feel that you need to be with, you will certainly be able to tell.
The right person will enhance your individuality and will value your independence - and their own - just as much as you do! They won't try to change you or hold you back from doing the things that you want to do with your life. If they love you, they will never lay siege to your ambition; rather, they will remind you why you got together in the first place: to become a team. There is nothing you two can't tackle together; there is nothing you two can't tackle individually. The key is ending up with someone who just wants to join your journey in life, walk side-by-side with you, and share the experience of love, while you both view the world through two different sets of eyes.
