Today people find love in many different ways. Some people find love through friends, family connections, random chance meetings, at school or work, online, etc. The ways are endless today versus how it used to be many years ago. I’ve always been fascinated with the way relationships used to come to fruition and exist in previous centuries, the way love used to be seen. It used to be that relationships were only cultivated because the match would be beneficial for the family either in regards to a fortune or a gain of status within society. Relationships were formed based on the idea of furthering one’s life and love was an after thought within a relationship. Marriages were a business transaction in which love either blossomed afterwards, or love was found elsewhere in the shadowy corners of cheating and deceit. And courtship, that was a whole other type of situation that went along with relationship cultivating that fascinates me. This fascination with old mannerisms of relationships was fueled by reading such historical fiction authors as Phillipa Gregory. I have always enjoyed history, but to have the idea of history, relationships and love put into novels that reeled me in and kept me intrigued all the way through, well that just tickled me pink.
Living in our modern day when relationships have swung as far the opposite direction as possible on the pendulum from where they used to be, I always find myself looking at people and their relationships. I look at them and some I see as fruitful, meaningful relationships, others I just question from the start….What does that person offer the other emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually? Physically? How does that match thrive despite their obvious distaste for each other? How do they not see the damage they are causing? I question my own relationships from the past and wonder, what was I thinking? Clarity is something that I do not believe some people obtain from an objective viewpoint until they have been through the ugliness.
Today relationships are cultivated from a simple “swipe” or “interested to meet you” button on a computer screen, indicating that a person is interested simply based on how you look on a picture on a screen. Other people still keep to the older style of meeting people through their friends, family, school, work, etc. I just wonder, how much of a true chance do the people who meet online have if they are able to create themselves into who they want to be, and relationships are “instant” instead of holding the older style of courtship into account.
“Chivalry is dead.” I typically hate to hear that saying because it is dead to a certain extent, but that is the fault of women and men alike in today’s society. We “swipe” instead of “courting.” The flirtations are there, but a large percentage of the the time those flirtations turn sexual quite quickly….both females and males are to blame. If one wants chivalry in their life, they have to live with the idea that a relationship is created over time. Which brings me to the idea of time being a killer or a cultivator of relationships.
Time may create a relationship, but if that relationship lasts and withstands the tests of time, that means that relationship was continually growing and being cultivated from the first day to the last. Relationships are not a stagnant thing if they are to be fruitful. People think that once they are “Facebook official” in their relationship or they have put a ring on that magical finger that the relationship should be strong. Wrong. A relationship needs constant attention, constant courtship, constant work from both parties in order to keep it alive. If one party falls stagnant, the end is in sight. You can be with someone for years and if time means one party falls stagnant in their part of the relationship then doom is most likely riding up to that door quickly. A stagnant move could be that both parties consistently put the work in to make a house feel like a home, dishes, laundry, yard work, etc. then one party gets lazy and decides they don’t feel like doing their part. That relationship could keep going for awhile, but that stagnant move will begin the root of the end.
I believe now that I read and enjoyed romance novels from the past where courtship was part of the story in cultivating “true love” because I lacked that knowledge in my own life for a long time. I know I am only a quarter of a century old, but having the knowledge I have now about relationships makes me look back at the past and realize that I wouldn’t know what I do now, without the mistakes I’ve made in the past.