Peachy's Ramblings & Muses

Recently, I was talking to someone about the criteria one uses to select a mate. Sometimes this criteria seems cold, and impersonal having to do with one’s achievements in the professional world, academia and so on. Other criteria may have to do with background, same ethnicity, same religion, and so on. But selection based on explicit defined points might guarantee a successful partnership, but not necessarily a loving one.

There are two things that I’ve often thought about regarding relationships: Definition of love and the role values play.

Most of the time people think of love as a “feeling,” a passive obsession that requires nothing other than the feeling. In reality, love is a very active verb, and in order for it to manifest itself as love it has to practiced.

Values are what count. If two people have the same background, ethnicity, religion or lack of it, and a host of other sameness traits, this won’t guarantee a relationship of love. Values are what people should look at when choosing a partner. The other, coded criteria is superficial, and even though the cultural match is close, it won’t infuse love into the relationship.

People who share the same values of life, even when not sharing the superficial coded criteria, can create relationships of love and excitement that will last to the end of time. As mentioned above, love is an activity. Without shared values, love is likely to atrophy and never manifest.