Love actually!

Come February and you are surrounded by the feeling of love. A month of love and romance. You can indeed feel love in the air, everywhere. For that one special day of celebrating love, famously known as Valentine’s day all over the world, you start preparing for it days oops weeks in advance. After all, out of the 365(Rest 364 days (oops 362 actually if you count birthdays and anniversaries), who cares?) days in a year we have got just one day to show our true love for the love of our lives. So we have got to create the right impression, right? And how. We have to go over the top to show the world how much we care for that special one in our life. I mean, what if we don’t do something special or noteworthy for each other and the world will know how much we love each other or rather don’t. OMG! Nop can’t take that risk now can I? I have to compete in the race of PDA or else I’m at the risk of being tagged as a loser in the game of love. Just imagine how everyone would feel if they found out that my life is not a fairytale romance as it seems after all and that I’m just a normal human being who has shades of grey in their love life. Devastating, right?

Well, after seven long years into our marriage, my definition of love has certainly changed. Dramatically. Like every other girl in her prime I had envisioned a very ‘DDLJ’ kinda love in life. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Pataofies the parents and they live happily ever after. Aaaah..such a blissful love life Raj & Simran had. But the reality is more like ‘Shaadi ke side effects’ kind. The actual movie starts after the marriage. I wonder what Raj & Simran’s life would look like after they got married. I wish Aditya Chopra reads this and makes a DDLJ part 2 featuring their life post marriage. Anyway, coming back to the point. According to me love has three stages...

Stage one – where you meet the love of your life and dream of a perfect life together.   

Stage two - when you get married and actually live a fairy tale romance where everything is hunky dory and you feel you are the next Raj & Simran in the making. Oh yes!

Stage three – Fast forward a few years into the marriage and viola! trouble starts brewing into your perfectly spawned heaven of love. Trouble of facing the reality after all these years.

And I have realized over the years that its not that your love for each other decreases or your love vanishes into thin air all of a sudden. In fact, it grows stronger with every passing year without us even realizing it. The only difference is the self realization that what we considered and defined as true love was not that after all. It was a delusional love. Love is way beyond that. Your perception about love changes or rather evolves with the passing time.

Love is not showering each other with expensive gifts; Love is about not gifting anything yet u feel it was one of the best gifts you received.

Love is not about having candlelight dinners together; love is about waiting endlessly to have dinner with your loved one.

Love is not about how good you look together or how much fun you had together; love is how much you remember and care about each other when you are apart.

Love is not about how attracted you are to each other; love is about accepting and embracing each other with all their shortcomings and limitations.

Love is not about holding hands and kissing; love is about not letting the hand go when the other is sinking.

Love is not about never fighting with each other; love is about patching up after every fight no matter how angry or upset you are and bounce back with a much strengthened bond.

Love is not about sharing your dreams with each other; love is about helping each other achieve their dreams.

Love is not how happy you are together; love is about how heartbroken you are when the other is in pain.

Love certainly is not about your physical needs; love is about bonding of two souls.

Love is not just looking at each other; love is looking in the same direction.

And, love is not a destination but it is a journey to be traveled together sticking to each other in spite of all the odds that you come across during the entire journey of life.  

So, that is how my perception of love has changed over the years and if someone asks me if I still love my husband after all these years then my answer would be no. Definitely not the delusional love or the conventional and stereotyped love we mostly come across. We are a typical married couple who fights most of the times over trivial things and doesn’t see eye to eye for most of the things in life. We have had our share of ups and downs in our marriage. We are totally opposite and have different priorities in life. Does that mean we are not happy with each other. Not at all. Infact, I don’t think I would have been happier with anyone else in this life. As much as we fight, we can’t imagine our lives without each other. The mere thought is terrifying. We may not be perfect together but we are just perfect for each other. So yes I don’t love my husband, I TRUST him! I trust him to be there for me always and that we will see the end of our journey hand in hand and sail through the toughest and roughest times together never letting go of each other’s hand. To conclude, true love is not just about LOVE, it is more about TRUST! Trust me on that.. :-)