I met David in Iceland last June. We had our conversation about love in a little touristy restaurant in front of the famous Hallgrímskirkja, Church of Iceland, when having some strong Icelandish hard liquor and some smelly fish dishes. David just got out of a not very healthy relationship and when I asked about his opinion on love, he told me that
"Love doesn't exist. There's no evidence about true love. Love is nothing more than just a close friendship. When you spend lots of time with someone, you'll end up noticing things and not just the surface. "
I decided to still post his sharing about love because I respect his honest sharing and value different opinions on love for there is no one-size-fits-all answer for love.
I then reconnected with David last week and told him that I changed the design of ourlovequest.com and also the content direction of the website. He gladly accepted my invite to be back for another chat about love.
First thing first. Davis is "kinda" seeing someone now. I can see his glowing happy face during our whole chat.
They met on Tinder. How did you go past the hi, hello stage on this app? I asked him.
He told me that since he's studying Chinese, he treats their chat as his way of practicing the language. Apparently, when you speak foreign language, you have a different personality, "I would argue", according to David. They talked anything and everything in life, from weekend plan to life ambition and everything in between. They share common love for food. All kinds of food. His date taught him some recipes and because of that, David starts cooking more now. He also resumes his running more regularly.
Indeed, a quality of a good relationship is that you want to develop yourself to be a better person. You shouldn't expect that from your partner though, David argues, because if you do so, you will add unnecessary pressures to them. Self improvement should be an effect of a relationship, not a direct consequence of its.
So what's love? Do you have a different answer this time? I jokingly quizzed David.
Love is a hard concept. You have the unconditional love from your parents and family that you grow up with. Love with another person is a different kind of love, not like what you used to have with your family. You need to learn what's out there in terms of their behaviours, opinions, perceptions towards life which might be very different from yours. You just need to admire them from a different perspective. Learn to admire small things about a person.
David continues.
In fact, love is not about admiring different things about a person. Love is about appreciating the similarities that are not equal. This is not easy as you will need to spend time learning about a person well enough to see the subtle "inequality" in the similarities between you and your date.
How do you know if he's the one for you?
I don't know if he's the one for me or not. That question is not important. What's more critical is that whether I want to make him the one or not. I don't have the answer yet as it's a bit early in our relationship.
You might wonder what David's advice on relationship? Don't worry, I got it covered too as it was also my last question for him. David shared with me that, in relationship, while communication is still key, sometimes, if there are certain things that we can tolerate and adapt ourself to, we don't have to speak up as it will just add more pressures & judgement to our partner.
I myself can relate to this and I am sure some of you might too. Sometimes, we offer advice, suggestions or our point of view because we want to move on to a different topic without realizing that we might hurt the feeling of our partner. All they need at that point probably is just a pair of ears to listen to their struggle and nothing else.
I said goodbye to David on Messenger and felt so happy for many reasons. Happy because he's happy. Also happy because his view on love changes and it seems like that he believes in love again. May the love be with you, my friend.