Some Thoughts About True Love - Part I

October 2008

As a poet, I wrote a lot about love in my poetry through the past nine years since I began writing. I wrote about all kinds of love and feelings associated with it. However, I still feel I need to write more about it, but I don't want to write poems, because I would have to stick to a rhyme or a line length. I want to write as freely as I want, using as many words and descriptions as I like. I just want to write some "thoughts"...

The reason I feel I want to write more about love is because although love is the thing that everyone writes about and sings for, I feel there are still things that haven't been said about it and that there are more to "true love" than just the typical clichés we know. That's why I decided to write now some of what I have in mind, so far, about true love.

True love is NOT the feeling that makes you shiver when you're next to the one you love, or that keeps you waiting for hours for a call from your beloved... Yes, true love includes these stuff and more, but not 'exclusively' or only that. I've seen tests people wrote online about how to know whether you're in love or not, and they kept writing things like "If you hear his voice you run out of words", "If you listen to a love song you think of her" and so on. These aren't bad or false things, but there's more to love than just this "physicality". By the "physicality of love" I mean the things that appear on us or the things that make you feel the love through your senses of touch, sight, hearing and so on.

How do you know whether it is true love or not?

A love is true after it passes some 12 tests I heard from my favorite man Dr Magdy Ishak on TV. They come in this specific order:

1- A love that increases with time

2- A love that is based on knowing each other, not love from the first sight or just some sort of "attraction".  

3- A love that focuses on taking care of the partner's feelings, not one's feelings, with no selfishness at all.

4- A love that is directed towards ONLY this person and not moving from one to another.

5- A love that makes you feel safe in a real way; knowing that this love can face all the problems if you are both joined together.

6- A love that encourages both partners to grow in everything and not neglecting their lives, work or God.

7- A love that can face troubles without falling apart.

8- A love that gives each one his/her own space; so that each partner respects the privacy and freedom of the other partner, that they don't want to 'possess' each other, but they both respect each other's wills, without making the love decrease among each other.

9- A love that evolves first after being convinced with the other, not love at the first sight!

10- A love that includes physical attraction... This point comes at number 10, but there is no harm that it should exist, but this shouldn't be what moves the couple forward in their relationship.

11- A love that is constant not based on any wrong reasons like sexual attraction or anything like that... that both couples know, respect and accept each other.

12- A love that is committed and grows towards marriage by carefully studying the right steps and moving towards them, not just "I want to marry you tomorrow"... and taking serious actions, taking all factors of life into consideration.

After all those conditions are satisfied, you have the seed of true love. I want to write now about the feelings you encounter when you experience this type of true love, when you feel like you've found your other half.

True love makes you a better person without actually "changing" you. You respect your beloved and that's why you will be ready to adjust to better techniques and actions that make him/her happy. You learn how to be modest, how to listen, share, sympathize, accept, trust and understand the one you love. In addition, you see him/her as the best person in the world, so you would want to learn things from him/her and you feel that he/she is better than you in almost everything, even if it is not true. You feel that this person is complete, and you need him/her in order to live, because you feel yourself so worthless without his/her being with you.

True love is not saying "I've found what I've been looking for in you", it's more like "I've found more than what I ever asked for in my life, I feel so blessed and so unworthy to deserve you, because you're too good yourself, and I never imagined to have someone as good as yourself in my life".

Also, true love makes you feel that sacrificing everything, even yourself, is nothing compared to the love you want to share with your chosen person. You'll be also so ready to sacrifice any dream you have in life, in order to reach the dream of spending the rest of your life with that person, even if it is the last thing you will ever do, because you know that by fulfilling this one dream of yours, all your other dreams in life will come true.

True love grows with time and doesn't die. Its wounds are never healed unless it's replaced by another true love, which may be very difficult sometimes.

Most importantly, true love makes you feel that no matter how much you describe, no matter how many words you write or read about it, its feelings are more superior and more indescribable, no matter how much you try.

The "physicality" of true love is also different than the physicality of puppy love or normal feelings of admiration. When you're near the one you love, you feel like you're in another life, that your feet are actually somewhere else other than earth... that you are in a dream that ends so fast but makes you so happy. You keep on trying to hold the hands of time from moving, because you want to freeze the moment with your beloved one. Also, when you both are near, you feel like partners, not strangers; you feel so comfortable, secure, safe, alive and happy.

True love gives you power to fight the whole world if you have to, in order to do anything concerning your love. You're ready to fight any circumstances to be with him/her and you're even ready to fight YOURSELF in order to make him/her happy by doing things that he/she likes.

True love brings you closer to God because you keep praying to win your beloved, and you keep praying to God to keep him/her safe, well, successful, happy and blessed all the time.

True love is about living outside yourself, living a life based on the life of someone else, to be ready to sacrifice, change, give, go through anything, do anything for the one you love... true love is something that makes you look forward to life and at the same time hate life. You'll look forward to it if you'll be with the one you love, and hate it if you ever feel you are not going to be together.

To answer the question: how do you know if this love is true or not? It is simple. When it is true, you'll never have any doubts, guilt or regrets about this love.

True love is what makes poets, writers, musicians and artists produce amazing pieces. True love is the thing that people will never be done with describing and talking about, till life is through ...