Midwinter and love ramble

The shortest day has once again passed and lighter days are on its way!

Found a blog I didn't know of earlier today. The author is also a member of a fairly new Swedish association for transgendered issues called KIM I am a bit involved in.

http://genderwarrior.blogspot.com/

I will read it through now while I am drinking my julmust. Julmust is a Swedish x-mas soft drink that is so good it makes Coca Cola drop their sales with 50% here. During December 50% of the soft drinks we buy is julmust.

Tomorrow the sun will set one minute later and in a couple weeks there will be no problem saying when sunrise ends and sunset starts.

I mentioned recently me and my primary partner N was in an article in a local Swedish Christian paper. We was on the cover and the only heading set on it was "Störst av allt är kärleken" - Greatest of them all is love.

I have been thinking a lot about what love is in general but since I read that cover I have gone back to my questions regarding love. I am portraited as someone who knows love and still I have very little clue.

In the chapter from 1 co that Paul tells us love is greatest he describe love like this "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Apart from Paul I have only heard this describtion of love from abused women. "I do love him and I will always protect him and I will always hope he will change". I hope my daughters will never look upon love as something where they shouldn't keep record of wrongs. Everyone should do that I think. Yeah, sometimes it is good to ignore that record but in the long run you have to get stats on that record that works out.

I don't stay with N because of the kind of list Paul made. I just can't imagine that any life without him would be as good as the one with him. If we take Pauls list:

Love...

1. …is patient
2. …is kind
3. …does not envy
4. …does not boast
5. …is not proud
6. …does not dishonor others
7. …is not self-seeking
8. …is not easily angered
9. …keeps no record of wrongs
10. …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
11. …always protects
12. …always trusts
13. …always hopes
14. …always perseveres.

To talk about love as a being of it's own is a good way of Paul to just weird it up a bit but still. How do we have it on these points? After nine years this isn't my look upon it.

1. …is patient. I would say the opposite. With people I don't know I have a rather good patience. When it comes to the people I love I am very impatient. Impatient to meet them soon, impatent for them to do nice and smart things frequently.
   
2. …is kind. Sure. Love gives some kindness. But I am most certainly never as cruel to people I don't love as the ones I love.
   
3. …does not envy. That is just plain silly. When we hear of jealousy love is almost always in the picture. I am not proud of my envy of all the life goodies N has that I don't but it is there and will always be. But I have to say that I like that he has so many envious sides.
   
4. …does not boast. There I can almost agree. At least after a couple of years together I don't feel much need to boast. It's just no point. We are too much of the same person.
   
5. …is not proud. Proud is such a hard word. I am proud of him and our relationship. At least most of the time. But I understand it isn't that kind of proud he was talking about.
   
6. …does not dishonor others. Maybe Love don't but I do from time to time.
   
7. …is not self-seeking. Who looks for love without self-interests?
   
8. …is not easily angered. I don't think I am the only one out there to be the most angry at the one I love most.
   
9. …keeps no record of wrongs. No formal records of course but yeah, I try to keep in mind how we suck and when.
   
10. …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Here I'm sort of in agreement with him. Evil is just evil. Truth is nice, hard but have obvious perks.
    
11. …always protects. Well yes. I think love have a tendency to make us protect each other. But I don't see that as a good side of love. When I get treated badly I mostly swallow it and feel shitty. I have tried getting better of not protecting and that little truth part just makes all the difference.
    
12. …always trust. Not at all. At some periods in our life I have had very little trust. Trust gets built and torn down by other stuff than love. There are many people I trust that I have no love towards. There are some I love deeply but doesn't trust much. Love and trust in a fluffy combo is always sweet but not always a given.
    
13. …always hopes. Maybe I agree here too. At least in the long run.
    
14. …always perseveres. Well, not always and is it a good thing? It is so easy to forget what is best in the long run and just persistent hang in there. To fight just because it is the right thing to do without really defining what's the goal and why.
    

I might have a very pragmatic view on love. But what has been our way of finding love and safety in our life together hasn't been that stupid list. Besides from a bunch of fluffy feelings to begin with it has been a rather simple rule to write and almost impossible to follow: To talk about everything. If things makes us happy we talk about it. If stuff makes us sad, mad or just uncomfortable we talk about it. We talk for hours and hours every week about seemingly meaningless stuff about how we feels but in the longterm that makes us know each other extremely well. It is beyond bonding.

But it is all about that communication. As soon as we stop talking about everything our knowledge about each other don't improve and the bonds loosens up. Love doesn't offer much when communication isn't there. At least it just makes me build up my own image of him and when the real version and my image crashes it hurts and creates loneliness regardless of physical distance. With lots of open communication prevents that sort of crashes a strong togetherness grows and the fluffy stuff grows.

That sounds all nice and are easy when the open communication is about how great everything is and how beautiful eyes you have. But from time to time life is about other stuff. Jealousy, disappointment, uncertainty and such are not that easy and socially encouraged to talk about at the end of the day. But just do it anyways. At least for me any feelings in that area grows fast if I keep it to myself and mostly just disappears if I bring it out in the light.

So, no. Love doesn't conquer everything. Honesty does. And it kind of builds love. Love is great but I have my bet on honesty. And love doesn't at all equals honesty.

So there is my midwinter love ramble. Next time I will write more fun stuff. I think. All i know for sure is that the sun will show for one more minute tomorrow.