" Love Me or Love Me Not" paper 2

The key to finding true happiness in a romantic relationship is by loving and accepting one’s true character. Having unconditional love is a statement of fact that a person should be loved unconditionally no matter the flaws involved. William Shakespeare once quoted that love to faults is always blind, always inclined, and breaks all chains from every mind. This quote means that people tend to overlook the flaws in their loved one’s characteristics, that love has no rules or boundaries; people just love. Loving someone for who they are and not what makes them who they are is the key to true happiness.

“Unconditional love” is loving someone regardless of their faults, misguided actions, qualities, etc. The term normally refers itself to a parents love for their child, but it is also true for relationships of romantic sentiment? For romantic relationships the number one question to be asked is if the two persons involved would be able to love unconditionally because everyone has flaws; nobody’s perfect. Tal Ben-Shahar questioned himself on what it means to be loved by “who we really are” (Ben-Shahar p. 113).  Do we throw around the term for moral support, someone else’s self-enjoyment or do we really mean it when we say we love someone?

A man named Paul Sunstone had a situation where someone loved him for what they thought he should be not for who he was. He stated how a person could have intense feelings for their lover even though they see them as someone else (Sunstone p. 1). Love in a relationship is about trust and honesty throughout problems and complications, so for loving someone because they remind a person of a past or present affiliation is not love; it’s a type of obsession. Tal Ben-Shahar stated that we are taught o love with our hearts now with our minds, and in Paul’s case he got the opposite of what love is (Ben-Shahar p. 113). It is hard to question whether people love someone or merely the idea of them because there is no easy answer. People have their own mentality of how love goes, how they express their love, their own reason for it.

William Shakespeare once quoted that love to faults is always blind, always inclined, and breaks all chains from every mind. He’s saying how relationships are all about openness and no boundaries to what’s being said or not said. The flaws that a person may possess should be overlooked, pushed aside, to be able to see what’s really there. A relationship is based on truth, honesty, trust, and commitment. There are no rules to how much you can love, just that we all love for the right reasons.

Unconditional love is so different from the kind of love most people have known all their lives; “Real Love”. Real love is caring about another person’s happiness without second guessing yourself about what you need; it’s what they need that comes first. Its real love when the other person cares about our happiness unconditionally. In order to find a real kind of love like that a person must first love themselves unconditionally or achieving any sort of goal in a relationship would be a lie because a person can’t begin to love another if they don’t love themselves.

People sometimes wan that kind of happiness because they see it as a relief, and so they get married. They feel that excitement when they confess their undying love for each other, saying how their hopes and dreams have been fulfilled but in the end after all of it is over they still feel the same way they did before marriage. “Marriage is not the key to happiness”, stated Anne Becker. Married people are no more happier than singles (Becker p. 58). People think hat by getting married they could reach that level of happiness that they have been striving for when they started a relationship. There is excitement in the beginning but after all the fireworks and confetti have stopped everything goes back to the way it used to be before.

Some people think that just being in a relationship with someone would bring them happiness, make them feel like they’re worth something, but doesn’t “Love” have a say in the matter. Just jumping in a situation where love is blind doesn’t make a happy ending for any persons involved, just a horrible beginning. Daniel Gilberts facts on Impact-bias relates to this type of relationship. Impact –bias is when we want something that we think is going to make us happy (Gertner p. 8) but in the end we just feel the same as we did when we didn’t have what we wanted. How can unconditional love fall into a category relationship if the people involved are only there for self-enjoyment, for the fame of being in a relationship?

So the key to finding true happiness in a romantic relationship is by loving and accepting one’s true character, by loving them for who they are as well as loving yourself. William Shakespeare’s quote on love is based on the statement “Real love has no bounds” because relationships are based on love, trust, and honor. Finding the right person that can make someone second guess their belief on love and turn it around into something special is Unconditional love. Knowing that the person can love beyond hardships and see past the difficulties that graced the other person’s past is called unconditional love. So finding the key t true happiness is not easy or hard, people just have to be willing to take the risk and open up their heart.