Speed of love

When is he gonna ask me out? Its been over a year and she’s still acting like we are just friends, I need to know if he loves me or not?

These questions are not strange to anyone who has attempted to be in a romantic relationship. They play on a loop in our minds, we go to bed with them and wake up with them, they boggle our minds till the point of mental exasperation.

So why has he/she not said the 8 lettered, 3 words, 1 phrase sentence?

I have come to understand that we love as humans at different rates. For some its love at first sight, for others, its love while walking out the door, but one thing that’s constant is that when love is ripe it’s the most beautiful thing ever.

What I aim to achieve with this write up is to turn our minds to those glaring reasons that stare us right in the face as to why we may not have gotten the assurance we need from a seemingly good relationship.

Love threshold

The functional unit of love is affection or trust depending on what robs you the right way, so for some people who maybe love deprived, a little affection can lock them into your arms. Conversely for those who have multiple sources of affection, you may have to exceed what they are used to to get the desired feedback. While it is arguable that romantic relationships differ in terms of intimacy, it is also common knowledge that these so-called intimacies are no longer peculiar to being in a relationship. One can be in a strictly sexual relationship with another person with a total absence of love.

So ones ability to decern a partners satiety would determine how much of an extra mile you will have to go or how many grand gestures you will have to do to secure the person's love.

Love nostalgia

Our experience is two-faced, while we like to see them as one of wisdom, they sometimes can be a source of condemnation, rebuke, repudiation, and the sponsor of our cavalier attitude in a relationship. That been there, done that mindset, that false clairvoyance we court with to our own dismay. I would always say love only when you are ready and not when you feel. Love is more than a feeling but a purpose-driven concept that midwife the process of singleness to coupling. Where it is not purpose-driven it is exhausted on a futile chase of lust and exuberance and then registers a not worth the try memory in one’s head.

One also has to make enquiry into his or her partners love history and try as much as possible not to recreate past experiences.

Love definition

Whilst poets, authors, and actors have tried selling us an impression of love, I have come to know that your senses are the only judges needed on your panel of what love means. There is no handbook on love, it is very subjective. That butterflies in your stomach feeling, that can’t be explained. Do your best to appeal to your partner's senses and this too can help speed love up.

Love capacity

Sometimes your partner might just not have the capacity to love, he is a modern-day reincarnated Nazi. So, while you put in so much affection and trust into your partner with the hope that he/she would take it into account and in turn pay you back in greater folds, it just never happens. Is there a timeline for this? sadly I can’t tell, but its usually at the point of stunting.

Love culture

In some cultures, certain festivities are observed to help nudge people into relationship, a common example is the valentine’s day, which is translated by the larger population to be the day of love and there is no better day to say those words than on Vals day. In homes as well, what is their love culture, in Neyo’s words, ‘how can you understand something you’ve never felt’.

So, if your partner grew up in the Siberian love world, well, good luck trying to get him or her to see the light.

The list is not exhaustive but these are some of the reasons why our partners do not work with our love clock, and we wonder if they live in a different love time zone. If it really bothers you (and the hesitation is not just pressuring from external forces ie friends, family or others) and you feel the wait may not be worth it in the end, then, by all means, let your feeling known and proceed as desired but remember, we do not all love at the same speed.