Observations on Love

By Opinion Editor Baneen Talpur

Valentine’s Day is upon us and once again I am being reminded of how single I am. Now, I am currently single for multiple reasons, the main one being the fact that I am in my final year and my course is way too stressful. Balancing teaching, college, and a part time job… on any given day I am wearing multiple hats trying to find myself in it all. I am very grateful for the life that I have. I am, most days, happy and confident with who I am, but seeing almost everyone else around me in relationships can make me feel lonely inside. How did they bag it and I didn’t? What do I lack? Again, the thoughts are leading me to spiral.

As I get older and observe love around me, I realize that there are so many things to be learned from the idea of love. Love is a minefield. When I was younger, my perception of love mainly came from Bollywood movies; a man would just come up and pick me off my feet and serenade me (Bollywood was very heteronormative when I was growing up). Everything would be fine. Western fairy tales didn’t help either with the Prince Charming fantasy. Love in my mind was simple. If you love someone that’s it. You don’t need anything else.

Fast forward to now and I realise that love is much more complicated than I thought. Or at least, the process of finding it is. There is a checklist you have to meet, apps to navigate, there are different stages from the talking stage, to the going out stage, the situationship phase, making it exclusive (or not if you are polyamorous, we are very open here at the University express) and then, finally after months of all this, is someone officially your partner. It sounds exhausting. Add to that the whole idea of being emotionally available, our inner trauma and issues, it becomes even worse. I find that people often have this notion that they are unlovable or that they are unworthy of romantic love. It comes from so many things from not seeing many positive relationships in real life, where women adjusted, compromised, and settled for less while being exploited by trash-can men or letting their inner perception of themselves say they’re not being attractive enough or approachable. I have shut myself off when people get too close sometimes; I do not want to be perceived as vulnerable. I am terrible for not telling people that I like them out of fear of rejection.

Navigating this complicated world has been a maze for me, apps which were designed to make the process easier are now too complex to understand. Which one do you choose? Tinder, Hinge, Bumble…  With each passing day there are more and more profiles to be made and people to swipe on. There is endless choice, each right a new possibility. In fact, there is so much choice that oftentimes we end up dehumanizing and forgetting that there is a real person at the other end. The finger just keeps moving, rejecting, moving on, never pressing pause. We set these unachievable ideas of our ideal partner and project this onto the apps, expecting the person to look like Jacob Eldordi or Megan Thee Stallion and have the intellect and charisma of (insert famous person with charisma here). We idealise love and forget that other people are just as flawed as we are.

Now I am not telling anybody to settle for less, I am just saying that no one is perfect.

I wish I could just meet someone in person and things to just magically work but they do not. In fact, I am so naive that for a while I believed that love did not need any figuring out or working out at all, that things just simply fall into place but also, that there is no falling, there is just place.

Relationships are also incredibly expensive these days. I hear people spending hundreds of euros on their partners’ Christmas presents or treating them to holidays multiple times a year. The expectation is now extravagant dates with lots of money spent. I find that women in particular want “a man with money” forgetting that at our age any man is also a broke college student, working in retail or hospitality – not the most prosperous areas. Women are expected to look like models 24/7, to wear makeup, or have that BBL. I understand the urge to splurge. There is nothing more satisfying than spending money on the people you love but expecting love to come from material goods is unreasonable. Men fail to realise that the women they spend hours looking at online do not actually look like that in real life. I recently met a cute guy at a societies’ day stand and instantly felt insecure that he may not find me attractive because I was bare faced – which is so silly!

My semi grasp on coming to terms with the conundrum that is love, recently took another hit while I was at a wedding celebration. One of my friends is getting married and, in my community, arranged marriage is the predominant, and almost expected way to find a partner. Her parents choose their child’s partner for life. I know many people who have gone through the process, but I would not want it myself as of now. Some of my friends just had babies and were discussing navigating the early stages of motherhood together. They were discussing what they want their children to call their father, their grandparents, and would they teach them Urdu. What will the bride to be call her husband? What will she wear at home? Traditional Pakistani clothes or western clothes? I came home feeling overwhelmed, I had never thought about any of these questions my entire life let alone be able to answer them. Love in one cultural context was bad enough but two? Lord, give me strength.  I was baffled that I am now in this stage of my life where people my age are in long term relationships, are engaged, pregnant and getting married. Where has the time gone? How did we grow up so fast?

I thought about what nicknames other than babe exist that do not sound cringe. Babe also is kind of cringey to me, but it is a start. I thought about how I have been so ‘delulu’ as to dress up or to look hotter just because a crush of mine will be at a venue but make no moves since I am so shy. It seems impossible to find love in real life right now and the idea of physically asking someone out seems unfathomable.  I thought about how draining it must be to have to think about what to wear at home simply because someone else is there. Sorry, home is my comfort place. I can dress up, but I cannot think about how I will be perceived all the time. It seems like love nowadays is a constant performance. Having to look pretty, act cute and be perfect ALL THE TIME. At home, I look like a rat, take it, or leave it.

While I do not have romantic love in my life right now, I am grateful for all the other forms that I have in my life. The forms of love that are overlooked in the pursuit of romantic love. I am smashing at platonic love, forming new, deeper, and happier friendships where I joke around and laugh my heart out. Love for my siblings, as I watch my youngest sibling grow up and try my best to give him the whole world. For those who I work with both young and old. And for the love that I have for myself which took almost my entire life to build.

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of the phenomena that is love. While previously associated solely with romantic love, recent trends such as Palentine’s and Galentine’s have opened the holiday up to other forms of love. Unless someone has to confess their romantic love for me, I will be spending Valentine’s Day as I always do, baking for those I love and treating them to the sweetness of life. Romantic love as I said is a minefield, but maybe with the right person it will feel easier. I guess we will just have to stay open, get over ourselves and experience love in real life and be open to all its forms and all its lessons. Both good and bad, there is no better teacher than love.