Should Love Be Enough?

This is a question I’ve come across over the years and each time, I’ve had to think about the answer but I’ve come to realize there might not be a suitable, satisfactory or specific answer.

The question came up again when I got a text from a friend of mine some days ago.

“Tunde, i know you probably would have something to say about this. It might seem random but I want your opinion. Take your time to think about it before you answer. Should love be enough to make a relationship work?”

I thought about it for a bit but something was different this time. In the past, my answer would’ve been “In a perfect world, yeah, love should be enough but we’re not in a perfect world, are we?” I’ve come to realize especially in the past year, that life is like an equation with certain constants and a whole lot of variables. Some things we’re quite certain wouldn’t change and would continue to occur while others tend to change and may be out of our control regardless of how we feel about them.

One of such aspects of life is the matter of love/relationships. We need to understand that while loving someone or being loved by someone is quite important in a relationship, there is something vital to consider. Every profession of love or affection; every “I love you”, “I need you”, “I miss you”, “You’re my this or that”, can never truly be verified for authenticity or genuineness. That means a relationship is basically a leap of faith; that at every point in time, you can only express some level of control over your own feelings, emotions and intentions. You don’t really know the depths of your partner’s heart.

Love should be the base upon which relationships should be built and like any physical building you can see around you, there’s much more to it than just the foundation.

As earlier established, other components other than love can be termed as the variables since what people want in their relationships differ vastly in most cases. There’s realistically no fixed way for any relationship to work. The two people involved are both variables with various ‘sub-variables’ that they must somehow fit into the equation.

In a nutshell, (and in my opinion), love is not enough. We’re all individuals with different wants and needs, trying to figure out what works for us. One thing I strongly suggest is that you make God the constant in your equation, and the variables would be balanced.