Question for the readers-
Love-
Is it easier to find and keep if you have siblings?
If you come from a loving family?
If there was a role model somewhere in your life?
OR
Are “onlies” (only children) doomed to never find love?
Think about it. What shapes our early values, our experiences, how we look at the world. If you are lucky enough to have a loving family around you, siblings you are close to, parents who love and care for each other, you have something to base it on. You see love every day. How it looks, how it feels, and so you go through life knowing what to get if you want love.
However, if you happen to be an only child, with no siblings to look up to or talk to. If you have parents who stayed together because divorce was disgraceful back then. If you don't even know enough to ask about it, if what you have is a lot of being alone, then what? Love isn't a part of your vocabulary. You come and go in your little world and maybe you notice things. Maybe you don't. Maybe some people seem happy to be together. You know this because of smiles, giggles, touching, hugs, and in general they seem to be content.
However, again, what if you are alone, most of the time, no one to ask, no one who seems to be in love, whatever that means, no one to talk to about it. Do you even know enough to wonder about it? I would think not.
Take it a step farther, and would you even know as a young adult, how to go about finding someone to love, someone as a potential mate? Unless you got lucky and found a role model along the way, someone you could ask questions, or get some direction at least.
Without any of that, would you go through puberty, knowing something was waiting for you but no idea what it was but oh my goodness there are such cravings, such a need to explore. And I will stop there.
Looking back, I can see how so many couples never stay together. Love takes work, it takes understanding, it takes putting up with a lot, it takes giving a whole lot. But if you have no idea how to do that, no idea what love is, you see the word on greeting cards, you hear people say it all the time. But what is it and how do you find it and how do you hold on to something you have no idea what it is or where to find it? Is there a class to take? Instructions? An owners manual?
Confused? Maybe, not, if you know what love is. Maybe yes, because you never found love, let alone kept it.
