The True Nature of Love

One of the greatest lies I ever heard was this.

From an ex girlfriend.

Who I loved with an attendant freedom.

I loved her without a leash.

So that she may fly as wide as she wanted.

“If you love me, you will be jealous of me. You allow me so much freedom because you do not truly want to be with me.”

That relationship died.

A natural death.

And now she is miserably married for the third time.

Some years before I met her, I had learnt to love with freedom, when I witnessed a lesson taught. 

It was the time when a cousin of mine, who was living with us during her NYSC, engaged in a fight with a girlfriend of her boyfriend and had the silliness beaten out of her by the nearly half her size girlfriend and the clothes torn off her back by the girlfriend’s friend.

These words were calmly said to her by my father as she cried her eyes out in the living room.

“Are you crying because of the beating or because someone else was chosen over you?”

“Uncle, how can he do this to me?”

“Do what to you?”

“Allow that girl treat me like this?”

“Did he tell her to beat you up?”

“No, but if he didn’t cheat on me with her, we won’t have had any reason to fight.”

“He cheated on his own accord, right?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“And did you fight on your own accord?”

“She provoked me.”

“How?”

“I told her to leave my boyfriend alone and she said that I should go tell my boyfriend to leave her alone.”

“And that was the provocation?”

“Yes, she was laughing at me.”

“But you went to her first and not the other way round, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I had warned my boyfriend to leave her, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“So you decided to take the fight to her?”

“I didn’t go to fight her uncle, I just went to warn her.”

“So how did the fight happen?”

“She was laughing at me with her friends.”

“Laughing is not fighting.”

“I know. But the laughter was her making fun of me upon her cheating with my boyfriend. It was too much.”

“So?”

“So I slapped her.”

“You drew first blood.”

“No she wasn’t bleeding. The slap was not too hot.”

“But she didn’t take that into consideration when she returned the favour.”

“Take what into consideration, uncle?”

“That your slap wasn’t too hot.”

“Uncle if it is not because of her friends and the skirt I was wearing, I would have taught her a lesson.”

“Did she teach you a lesson?”

“Me? Lesson? I am just looking at her. If it is not because of the love I have for my boyfriend, someone like her can’t even talk to me.”

“So the love you have for someone that doesn’t love you enough to stay loyal to you has led you to the point where you have been beaten so shamefully by someone who wouldn’t have had the time or space to be at par with you, right?”

“Yes o, uncle. The jealousy was just too much. My boyfriend was openly flirting with her. I just couldn’t take it.”

“But why were you jealous?”

“Because I love him.”

“Because you love him?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“So it is natural to be jealous because you are in love?”

“Yes, even God who loves us said that he is a jealous God”

“And you see the devastation that follows his jealousy. So why would you want to glorify your jealousy when you know it leads to such mayhem?”

“Which mayhem, uncle?”

“The beating you have received.”

“I will do my own back.”

“You still intend to keep fighting?”

“She doesn’t know what she has started.”

“You are going to fight as a revenge or you are going to fight over your boyfriend?”

“Both of them.”

“Why?”

“I love him uncle. Why would I allow someone just come and take away from me the person I love?”

“But is he going to fight for you?”

“Yes he will if someone else tries to take me away from him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes uncle.”

“If he will fight if someone takes you away from him, why isn’t he not cheating on you, when he knows that the cheating might result in the person he is cheating with taking him from you, or you finding out that he is cheating on you and you leaving him.”

“Enh?”

“You don’t understand me?”

“No uncle.”

“Okay, if your boyfriend will fight anyone who might take you away from him, that means he loves you dearly right?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Okay, if he loves you dearly, don’t you think he will not do anything that will result in him losing you?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“So how come he is cheating on you with someone, who may convince him to leave you or why will he run the risk of you finding out that he is cheating on you, if he knows that you may leave him if you find out?”

“That girl can’t take him away from me. He is just using her. And me, I cannot leave him for anything.”

“So if he is just using her, why did you need to go warn her?”

“Because I am jealous of him doing anything with anyone but me.”

“Why will you want to be with someone who does not want to be with you.”

“He wants to be with me uncle.”

“But he wants to also be with her.”

“She is the one that is flinging herself at him.”

“And how do you know that?”

“If you see her you will know. She is very cheap and bush something.”

“So your boyfriend is willing to cheat on you with a very cheap and bush something? Doesn’t that show you the value he has for you?”

“It is temptation, uncle.”

“No it is not temptation. You can be tempted when what tempts you has an equal or higher value than what you have. But what your boyfriend has is greed and callousness. He is an undisciplined mind who has no value for what he has, so he has no problem risking it for something that is of lesser value than he has. It is actually foolishness. You are in love with a fool, and have allowed your love lead you to a point where you have been humiliated through your uncontrolled jealousy.”

“Uncle are you saying that I should just allow my boyfriend who I love to just go and be doing any how with any girl he sees?”

“I am saying that it is not in your power to stop him. Jealousy fools you into thinking that you can control him. You can’t. He is the only person that can control himself. You just have to love him freely. Because whether you like it or not, even if you lock him up in a shoe box, it does not guarantee that he loves you. He will be there, but he will not love you. And because he does not love you, there will always be someone else he will be ready to give his love to even while he is with you. So what is the point of that, if your love is predicated on him loving you back, and because of that the anger of your jealousy is continually unleashed.”

“I don’t understand you uncle.”

“I mean that jealousy is natural, but so is anger. You still need to control them. When you love without freedom, what you do is that you seek to control. And when you seek to control the uncontrollable, all it does is bring out the animal in you. Because you will always fail in controlling what you cannot control. Your jealousy is the thermometer that measures that failure. The more you feel you are failing the higher it rises. And as it rises so are the actions of the beasts in you. Those actions that you cannot be proud of when your eyes are clear from the anger that fuels jealousy. Tell me are you honestly happy that you got into a fight with those girls?”

“No I am not.”

“Do you wish that you do not love your boyfriend as much as you do?”

“Sometimes?”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, I would be able to leave him.”

“And why can’t you leave him?”

“Because I love him too much.”

“You love him like one loves a diamond. The diamond has no say in the matter. That is why your love has imprisoned both you and your boyfriend. Can’t you see that because you have loved him with a leash, your leash now controls you and him, so much so that even though he treats you so shabbily you can’t let go of him, because if you let go of him, you will not only lose him, but you will lose the control of him that you think you have but you don’t.”

“But he loves me too.”

“Maybe he did when you both started out. I don’t know. But that is the thing with jealousy, it mutates love. Like thorns in a rose bush. They change the quality of the rose or they kill it altogether. You see when you love someone jealousy, that person in order not to suffocate, creates a way to survive while being in that relationship with you. They strike out to love or even be with someone else in a relationship that is nothing like the relationship you have with them. It is like self preservation or the need to hold on to an identity. The truth is that no one really likes to be controlled. Even if they want to be controlled, they want to be controlled on their own terms. Jealousy whether in love or out of love totally creates the very controlling environment that every one runs from. When you allow jealousy thrive, what you have done is failed already while you carry on with the delusion of winning.”

“But the jealousy I have because of these girls he is cheating on me with is not stronger than the love I have for him.”

“You see, jealousy is a stronger emotion than love is. It does not validate love. Even if it is sometimes a part of love. Like an errant child and a doting parent. The latter needing a strong arm to nurture the former. Learn not to indulge jealousy. For it will pull down in seconds. What love built in ages. And still make you look like a fool in front of the world. What you love will always be yours, if what you love loves you too. If it does not, jealousy will never make it yours, even if jealousy ties it to you. Because although you will have it with you, it will still not be with you. It will be like those coconuts you crave because of the water in them. You keep the coconuts in expectation of the day you will break them to savour the water within. But when you do, there is no water in it. All the water had dried up, all the while you were hoarding the coconut. So please do not cry, but give praises, for life has only taught you a lesson. If you go into a pig sty to wrestle a pig, do you blame it for how dirty you looked after the fight?”

I am blessed to have learnt to be wise in love.

I had a father.

Johannesburg 

Jude Idada

February 2, 2019