Do You Know Love?

A background in my writing skills

Since my very early age, especially since I had a motivation, an ambition, a wish, a goal and a desire of becoming a writer. But some barriers such as a lack of means, experience or guides and even my early age didn’t allow me to realize my dreams but I didn’t miss a hope that my dreams will be realized one day.

In 2010, when I was in fourth form (4^th Form) of secondary school I got an opportunity to participate in a competition of essay writing of East African Community (E.A.C.) and my essay was in English language though at that time I used more French than English but I had a wish to become fluent in English. It was my first time to do such great work and I was very happy though I guessed that I may not arrive to be waged. Finally, I didn’t arrive to be among the best laureates who have been selected.

In 2011, when I was in third form of Modern Arts (3^rd F.A.), I started my writing skills in poetry area and I often used French language even if now I use three languages namely Kirundi, French and English.

In 2014, when I was in first form of Arts (1^st F.A.), I got another opportunity to participate in a competition of composing a play (theatre) using one of the topics we had been given and the languages of the competition were French and Kirundi. I chose a topic related to violence along with one related to the interference of the parents in their children’s love and I entitled my work “Un père honteux” (=an ashamed father), now modified and perfected to become “L’amour triomphé” (=Triumphed love). I arrived to be among the five best laureates who composed in French language and I got a reward on Monday, the fourth day of the month July, 2014 in “Palais des Arts” apartment in Bujumbura downtown and this success gave a very strength to continue with writing carrier.

So, I continued doing my task-job of writing mostly in poetry and drama (theatre) until this time and I have four achieved works namely “La Poésie est mon Art et mon Pactole” which is a first anthology or collection of my poems in French language, L’amour triomphé” wich is a theater in French language that I have previously entitled “Un père honteux”, “Un matricide et le suicide” which is also a theater in French language and ‘The Danger of Witchcraft’ which is also a theater in English language and a lot of poems in English language.

Then now, I am very sure that with this first novel ‘Do You Know Love’, I will get a great fame and a huge motivation of continuing in this area of writing thanks to you, dear lovely readers.

i. Dedications

Ø Firstly to God. He gives me always health and strength to work faithfully and hard.

Ø To my late beloved mother Agnes NTACONKRIKIRA: thanks a million for your tenderness and kindness you showed me. I hope that you’ve arrived in Abraham’s bosom. Enjoy your stay in that good kingdom and pray for me daily.

Ø To my father Joseph BOSHIRWA: thanks a lot you too. Thanks to you and mum, I appeared on this earth.

Ø To my brothers and sisters and especially to my grand Sister Mrs. Janvière NSABIMANA who played an important role during my studying course by her moral and material support. What I am today is the fruit of your help. I owe you respect and an unconditional love.

Ø To my uncle Elie BASHINGWA. Thank you so much for your moral and material support especially in my writing carrier.

Ø To all Educators who taught me at the Primary School, to all Teachers who taught me at the Secondary School and  to all Lecturers of the Institute for Applied Pedagogy (I.A.P.) in English department of the University of Burundi where I’m being majored now.

I warmly dedicate this book

ii. Acknowledgements

a) To readers

ü First to all of you who appreciated my four first works among which three in French language such as “Une vie sans peine avec la poésie dans mes veines” which is an anthology or a collection of my poems in French language, “L’Amour triomphé” which is a play in French language, “Un matricide et le suicide” which is also a play in French language and one in English language which is a play entitled ‘The Danger of Witchcraft’ and all my poems in English language.

ü To all who knew me as writer and especially as a poet and a playwright. I thank you so much to see you encouraging me. Your encouragement gives me a much better strength to continue and I’d like to ensure you that, as your supports strengthen me, I pledge you to declare and sensitize your goodness and kindness everywhere I will be every second, every minute and every hour.

b) To mates, friends and acquaintances

Ø Firstly to my classmates that we had been studying together at the Primary School of Nyabitre, those that we’d been studying together at the Secondary School at the Junior Seminary of Dutwe and at the Lycée Saint Joseph of Rusengo and those that we’ve been graduating at the University of Burundi in the Institute for Applied Pedagogy (I.A.P.) in English department since the first bachelor (BAC. 1) until this second one (BAC. 2) in which we’re been graduating. Thank you very much for the good times I spent with you and the hard scholar life that we still sharing together with brotherhood and mutual help.

Ø Secondly to all my friends since my very early age till now. Your love built on a good relationship helped me to live happily and harmlessly as long as you supported me and stayed beside me in bad and hard times. You’re all in my mind and if I were to write down your names, they would take plenty of pages.

Ø To my acquaintances i.e. all those who knew me and who still recognizing me and especially those with whom I have been sharing my talents in different groups and clubs that helped me to improve my skills in different domains such as music dancing skills domain, writing skills domain , theatre domain and especially in poetry domain.

I don’t have much money in bank or in my trousers’ pockets, I don’t have much fortune but, I have many things to talk about love and my heart beats for love too. Since I got that opportunity to know what love is, I feel a desire of sharing with you what I have.

 As I am a poet, I’d like to begin by this poem which will awake your spirit, which will open and refresh your mind and which will also thrill your soul and your heart in such a way you will enjoy your reading of this book.

 Poem: Love

Love is life

And love helps us to be safe.

 “Where there is love there is life”, said Gandhi.

And I, I declare that nothing is better than love in the whole world especially in our country, Burundi.

Yeah! First of all, love is unconditional

And it is good and essential

Because it has the potential

To make this world attractive, good, social and special

Love is the prop of relationship, friendship and brotherhood

And those are the basis of life everywhere in our humanhood.

Love is that feeling, that sensation of attraction, affection, tendency and tenderness for someone that you met with

And that you want to stay with.

Love is that phenomenon that pushes us to be together;

Love is that instinct that pushes us to help one another.

Love is that emotional feeling that pushes a gentleman to think of his wife and a lady to think of her husband

Reason why love is that sensibility, that attitude that makes us be in band.

Love is that feeling, that quality, that good nature that we’ve born with

So that we can live happily with

Someone who will inspire us each and every good word

That we will utter in this world.

Love is that emotional attraction, that desire of someone who will lead us to a good life without harms and dangers

A good life that we’ll share with the one we’ve chosen to be at our side without worrying about our foes and strangers

The one we’ve chosen to be our good way of a good future

Till the day of our departure.

Night and day I ponder and wonder how would be this world or the world above

If there was not love.

Yeah! For sure, this world would be a hell

And in the world beyond no one would be glad or would be well

Because I know that without love everyone suffers from grief and sorrow

And regrets a lot in such a way he misses a hope of a life of tomorrow.

Frankly speaking, love is another world beyond this one in which we live

Because when someone is in love

He is always happy, joyful and smiling

Because love is not tiring

But love is inspiring

And this pushed me to call it a good feeling

Love is a good nature

And love is a clue and a key of a good future

Reason why I judged to make it a password of my life

Because it will provide me a wife

And a wife will help me to live safe.

Love is not a whim or a dream

But love is that attraction, that sensation of affection that helps us to live gladly in any team.

That’s why I teach love throughout poetry

And love is a good entry of a mystery.

Love puts us in a good mood

And with love, the world will be always good.

By Boshir Melcky (BOSHIRWA Melchisedeck)

Burundian Poet, Poetry Is My Life

Dear readers, I think that throughout the above poem, you’ve got an idea of what is love. I’m not the first who wanted to tell you what is love and I hope that I’m not the last. But let me start telling you that love is very necessary in the world and in the universe because without love, the world would be fearful like the hell.

In his book of Proverbs (29:15), King Salomon, the one who is written in the bible, said: ‘Water reflects a man’s face back to him, so is the heart of one man to another.’ Here, he wanted to mean that if you’re loved or if you’re treated with love, your heart will really feel that love.

Frankly speaking, the theme of ‘love’ has been a preferable topic by the fact that it interested for years and years different thinkers and inventors namely poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, scientists and researchers of different races, generations, groups or genres from different countries of the world. It has been a matter of various definitions and interpretations depending upon whether it implies a deep analysis or strong feelings of someone’s actions of affection, tendency or tenderness. Therefore, hopeful romantics like me, and not cynics, define it as a good feeling in such a way they are always ready to welcome their soulmates.

For sure, love is not an abstract thought or feeling but it is a concrete and an evident one. There’s always a tangible and genuine proof of its meaning because it dwells in our hearts and our hearts take always hints from our senses and thus what we see, hear, taste, touch or even smell gives us the significance of what is in the world and in the universe. If we see or hear that those who are in love are always happy, an instinct of love will appear in our hearts instantly.

Hence, I declare that love is from inside and shows itself outside by actions or attitudes of somebody. Then, as love is what helps us to live happily and sometimes harmlessly, it gives us a much better strength to hope and to think of an appreciable life and thus we’re gladder and more joyful than ever in such a way we don’t worry about any life’s grief. In few words, love is like a prop of our life of everyday because it provides us happiness and pleasure which are the basis of a good life without grief, sorrow or pain.

Everywhere you’ll be or everywhere you will go you will always hear the word ‘love’. To best understand it, you’ll often need to think of it as a verb or a noun.

I am sure that this word is the most uttered in the world and it is sometimes uttered in phrases or sentences (for instance: ‘my love’ or ‘I love you’) by all people and mostly by the lovers especially the married without forgetting the parents especially the mums who utter it in order to express or to show a great affection to their children.

Some people uttered this word because they know what they’re talking about whereas there are some who utter it not because they know or think deeply about what they’re talking but because they heard or they hear others uttering it and feel to utter it too because of conformism.

In this book, you will get an explanation of love depending on different considerations, different interpretations or different meanings of that word. We will focus on love in general throughout love between the children and their parents, love and the children, love and the adolescents, love and the lovers (case of fiancés), love and the married, love and the old. At the end of the book, you will be able to differentiate the various meanings of the word ‘love’ depending on the different ways it is considered or the cases in which it is uttered.

 

Love can be considered as a special relationship that is cultivated between two people and that grows up over time, and it’s looking for knowing one or another (him or her) by accepting to experience life’s gains and failures together (love between lovers). Indeed, the word ‘love’ can be used as a verb (for example: I love you) or as a noun (for example: You’re my love).According to the English dictionary, when it is considered as an uncountable noun, it means ‘a strong affection’ and it involves: an intense feeling of affection and care towards another person (for example: A mother’s love); a deep or abiding liking for something (for example: My love of cows); a profound and caring attraction towards someone (for example: Your love is the very important thing in my life). When it is considered as a countable noun, it means ‘the object of one’s romantic feelings; a darling or sweetheart’ (for example: I met with my love, my darling, my sweetheart at the bank).

Apart from those connotations and denotations, it has also many others meanings but the above ones are those that will interest us more in this book.

Many people confirm that ‘love’ is a willingness to think of another’s well-being or gladness beyond yours. They define love as a set of extreme feelings of attachment, a need of affection and add that it is sometimes a set of dramatic or sudden feelings of attraction and respect, a fleeting emotion of care and like, a choice of helping and caring of another.

When that word is used by different people of different relationships and of different strata in the society, it has various meanings and forms. It is defined and interpreted differently depending on the speaker’s meaning or desire and most of the times it is uttered with the meaning of ‘a great affection’ that a person feels for individuals or things.

In general the verb ‘to love’ can mean ‘to give’. This means that when you love someone you show it him or her not only in words but also in actions. If you love your beloved, you must show it and by the same token, if you believe that you are loved, you must show it too. I think that when you’re loved, you’ll recognize it by the way your lover treats you.

By the way, love can be considered as a bond between children and their parents. It’s natural that the children love their parents and vice versa. The relationship between them can be considered as a ‘true love’.

In fact, the different relationships that people make within their period of life, the relationship between parent and child is the one of the greatest importance. All of us we’re born with that instinct of loving our parents because they are evidently the source of our life and our parents also have the instinct of loving us as long as we are like the fruits of their real love. Really, our parents are our origin and thus, without them, we would not exist. Our parents are indeed primordial because they are the first to provide us what we need in our life of everyday. Since we were babies, infants and children, they had struggled to care for us and night and day they had looked for our good health, our pleasure and happiness, and they continue doing so during our lifetime while they still living, of course, because they love us very much.

When we were babies or children we used to cry and while we were crying our mums used to cradle and soothe us with their lullabies that they uttered in a singsong manner in such a way we kept quiet in order to listen to the rhythm of their good melodies. This also reveals tenderness and affection that our parents, especially our mums, had and have for us.

When a child is trying to acquire some utterances of words, firstly he begins to stutter or stammer his father and mother before acquiring the other utterances of words. Also, when a child or even young cries because he’s suffering or paining, he sometimes cries by calling one of his parents (for instance you will hear him or her crying by saying: ‘O my mum!’ or ‘O my dad!’) and when you frighten, threaten or intimidate a child, he will cry by saying that he will tell that to his father or his mother (and this is very common in countryside and in urban places in our country, Burundi). I am not really a Psychologist or Sociologist but, apart that the love we have for our parents is innate, I’m very sure that this is a proof of a kind of love that every child has for his parents since his conception and develops from infancy.

At that, the love between parents and children, which is considered as a strong bond, is naturally strong. Romances or other kinds of relationship and friendship come and go, but when a parent is bonded to his baby, he’s probably hooked for life. The love, that a mum or a dad that feels for her or his child is a basic part of his or her make-up. That’s why even an adoptive or a step parent is primed to form strong bonds with his child because this is what will make a child be equally ready to connect with him or her.

Over time, researchers and experts have uncovered fascinating details about the connection link between children and their parents. They explained why babies are so addictive and why we deeply love our parents and why our parents love us deeply when they got older because parents can sometimes be embarrassed by their children’s tantrums, boring arguments or other children’s grimaces. They said: ‘The bond between parents will change over the years but its strength never fades’. This means that the parent’s love for his child lowers during life as far as the child grows up but will never disappear.

Furthermore, I have discovered that the love between parents and children can exit even before the sight of children, i.e. a mum or dad can feel a deep love for his baby before his birth. Surely, parents are sometimes full of a potent mix of emotions and anticipation, especially those who haven’t got a child yet, in such a way relationship with their baby is very huge even if they haven’t seen him or her yet. What I have concluded is that, a man will be always happy to see his wife become pregnant and a woman will be very glad to give a birth to a child and will always look for the well being of his baby in her womb. I heard some confirm that a baby can himself develop a bond with his mum while he is in her womb. They said that some studies show that a baby’s heart will beat a little faster at the sound of his mother and they affirmed that this is what will excite and comfort him or her from his stay in his mother’s womb and during his life on earth. They added that babies and older children have a much better capacity to create tight and rightful relations with any caregiver who responds to their physical or emotional needs.

Evidently, with the attachment theory and the psychological principle of human relationship, people of all ages are naturally, deeply and lovely attached and connected to those who provide, inspire or offer them a sense of security, support and especially love and happiness.

Then, the love between the children and their parents is innate and natural on one hand and acquired or nurtured on the other hand by the fact that a child acquires everything in the society in which he grows up. It can also be considered as a characteristic of a good relationship between a child and his parents. All illustrates and demonstrates a kind of a mutual, pure and natural love between children and their parents.

Childhood is defined as the state of being the child or the time during which one is a child, from between infancy and puberty. During this early period of life, every child tries to acquire what he sees around him in his society and his mind and spirit are faced to different events and various things.

Above all, a child feels at ease when he is with others, with whom he plays and kids. What is very remarkable as a sign of love in childhood is that a child will always share what he has with others and sometimes he does it not because he is sure that his friends will give him back what he gave them but he does it by love.

I remember, when I was a child, when my mum came from the market, she used to bring me some loaves of bread, some biscuits, some sweets and some ripe bananas. When she arrived at home, she called and gave me them. Instantly, I went quickly to look for my friends, firstly in order to show them that my mum had brought me something and secondly in order to share it with them. This shows that during his childhood every child is full of love and his love is special and different from other kinds of love because even if it happens that children fight, after a short time you will see them playing again by laughing and smiling which is not the same case for the adult persons who fight or quarrel.

 Exactly, no one can ignore that childhood is a very good period of love and that this love is different from that of teenagers, adults or others because it is a kind of love which takes nothing into consideration or which hasn’t any purpose rather than that of a good relationship, brotherhood because normally during this period everyone is innocent and his mind is only full of good things. This kind love can be considered as natural because naturally every human being is born with love even if it may disappear or can be lowered slowly depending upon the society in which a child grows up, if his society which is stricken by some weaknesses of hatred and jealousy which will have an impact on his behavior.

In childhood also, children are somehow curious in such a way they’re too sensible to the word “love”. One day my cousin, who is five years old and who studies in the First Step School in the second year, impressed me. She was back from school and she called me very loudly and this was strange to me because it was the first time she called me in such a way. I replied to her call and she showed with her fingers a symbol of love and she uttered: “I love you”. I was really very surprised and I asked her where she heard what she told me and she replied that she heard it at school. Then I conclude that children are so sensitive to ‘love’ and they know what this word is about even if no one told them its meaning. Henceforth, I made believe that everybody who is normal is born with the instinct of love inside him or her.

Moreover, you’ll hear children, when they are playing, calling one another: you’re my darling or my dear or my sweetheart or even you will hear them saying: you’re are my husband or you’re my wife. Though they may have heard that from their elders or anywhere else, this also illustrates that a human being has the instinct of love since his very early age.

In short, ‘love’ in childhood can have two meanings. One can be considered as a good relationship between a child and others of same age as his. Another can be viewed as an instinctive love that every human being is born with and that he has at his very early age. This instinctive love is natural and will develop as the child grows up.

The adolescence is defined as the transitional period of physical and psychological development between childhood and maturity. Literally adolescents or teenagers are persons who are in their teens, that is, persons whose age is between thirteen and nineteen. In this period, every person goes through puberty, and he or she grows taller, stronger, heavier, hairier, and moodier and may also get pimples on his or her face. Apart from those physical and hormonal changes, there are also many other psychological developments that take place in parallel.

Human beings are full of desires and during this period of adolescence love and sexual desires are at peak and this gives rise to extreme attraction towards the opposite gender depending upon one’s feeling orientation. Therefore everyone’s heart beats for love and this is totally normal and happens to everyone.

Therefore, if you want to discover that, you will try to have a look on adolescent’s attitudes in your society or in your neighborhood or you may think of your period of adolescence. Let me begin by telling you my history of adolescence and love. When I was thirteen years old, I was in seventh form (7^th Form) of secondary school in a boarding school of boys only (a seminary).

 During the holidays, I met with some friends of mine who studied in other schools of boys and girls. One day they asked me if I had a girlfriend and I replied them that I hadn’t. They urged me to look for a girl to love but I was very nervous in front of girls as far as I was very young but also because I spent a long time at school with boys only. But really, when I met with a beautiful girl in street I felt love in my heart and I was not able to talk to her. So, they told me to make an appointment with girls who were our former classmates of primary school and everyone was supposed to take his own and discuss with her. That day I was not really on this earth. When meeting with those girls, I found myself talking about love issues and the girl with whom I was talking, as I concluded it, was really full of love in such way we were so crazy. This illustrates that in adolescence, everybody has a great weight of love.

Furthermore, in high schools I have seen many couples and surely the majority of dating adolescents in high school fall in love. Frankly speaking, some do it as an experience of friendship or relationship and others do it with a magical match of other purposes. Then, teenagers scholars fall in love for mutual enjoyment or sexual attraction, social compatibility or physical affection, sensitive consideration or friendship feeling, a romantic excitement, all combining to create a sense of caring, commitment, and completeness which make one person the only one for another one.

Hence, life changing is how ‘in-love’ feels in adolescence because it is a far moving and compelling relationship than the young people have known before. Each teenager is always on the other’s mind, the one he wants to spend all time with, in such way a time with a good friend is often set aside. This is really a merged relationship in such a way each one feels part of the other and not entirely whole when they’re not together. They are highly sensitized to each other, that is, both are alert to subtle interpersonal signals so that they cannot be easily hurt by small slights from each other. Therefore, the intimacy is deeper than with anyone else.

However, when everyone will too feel so deeply known or well knowing will make other relationships seem weakened by comparison. By the way, the joy of having each other is coupled with the fear of losing each other and thus the conflicts of a painful kind may occur as they wrestle with issues of freedom and possessiveness, honesty and deception, trust and jealousy, togetherness and separateness, satisfaction and service.

I have discovered that people tend to have shorter relationship when they’re in their teens because the things they want to get out of a romantic relationship change as they get older and older. Teenage love is mainly about physical attraction. But by the time we reach twenty years or so, we rate a person’s inner qualities as most important. In their teens also, adolescents’ relationships are most of the time about having fun. Dating can seem like a great way to have someone to go places with and do things with and it can also be a way to fit in. When our companions or friends are all dating someone, we might pressure ourselves to look for or to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

Moreover, during our period of adolescence, friends from our childhood become special, no matter how much time has elapsed between visits. These connections arise not only due to the psychological changes of our minds but also the result of shared roots during the formative years. Our childhood friends and sweethearts, who experienced with us all wonderful, horrible, boring, and even embarrassing moments, will be the first to provoke a stimulus of love in our hearts and spirits.

In addition to that, I may say that, in general, teenage love is not real because it depends on a lot of factors, a major being maturity. As far as I’m concerned, teenage love stories are the most beautiful and pleasant part of one’s life since, while puberty phase take care of one’s physical aspect, teenage love takes care of mental. A majority of teenage love stories don’t succeed because of many different barriers or factors but what I can insist on is that, in spite of its failure, teenage love teaches great lessons in life. I remember I first felt loved when I was in second form in Modern Arts section (2^nd F.A.) of secondary school and I was 19.

I swear you; she was a very pretty and lovable girl who would be my soulmate for the eternity. With her, everything felt like the end of the world however, it wasn’t so. Truly, in love with her, I was the most arrogant, stubborn, egoistic, introvert and anti-social person I would ever know personally now. But when she broke up our tight relationship, I was devastated, heart-broken, and felt like a victim who was not served justice but now I feel that I deserved that and it took a lot to recover and completely changed the way I used to be.

For sure, I was the most immature person that, in general, every teenager is. All I had in abundance were without great importance or consideration. Look! ‘Desire’ to be with her as other do it; ‘jealousy’ to not let her be with anyone else, ‘passion’; to win her every time so that no one could take her except me; ‘ego’ to not let her go because as she was my first lover, I would be very shocked; ‘anxiety’ to lose her some day. All these factors combined made me an unwanted boyfriend that any girl could barely handle. My love for her was not really real because I fell in love as a kind of conformism because I was afraid while all friends of mine had their girlfriends whereas I hadn’t one I too.

Adolescence is really the period during which every person feels a deep love but this love is neither strong nor real because it is somehow emotional and it is widely based on conformism and on a range of various feelings or aspirations or desires of a teenage person.

Lovers are those people who are in love. Fiancés are men and women who are engaged to be married. I know and I am sure that everyone has experienced love or has loved-or has been loved by parents, brothers, sisters, or friends. But this kind of love between lovers (especially the love between fiancés) is special and it is really called ‘a romantic love’. It involves an intense and new feeling unlike any of other ways of loving.

Surely, loving and being loved improves richness of our lives and adds a huge desire and a hope of living so long. When we feel close to others, we are happier and even healthier in such a way we still smiling most of the times. For sure, love helps us feel more important, well understood and much secured. That’s why the program of love is well scheduled into us.

Since we were little children, we feel a strong attachment to our parents in the same token we will instinctively fall in love with those who will attract us and who will inspire us each and every good word that we will utter in this world. Therefore, each kind love has its own distinctive feel. The kind of love that we feel for our parents is quite different from our love for our best friends, or our sweethearts. Then the love between lovers, especially the fiancés, is felt in romantic manner and has its own unique form.

Effectively, this ability to feel romantic love starts to develop during adolescence and become strong and effective over time. Adolescents all over the world notice that they have those good and passionate feelings of attraction and tendency in spite of every kind of cultures where people are denied to act on or to express these feelings and thus they’re still there.

By the time they reach their twenties, most boys and girls assess the value of support, closeness, and communication as well as passion. This is the time when people start thinking about finding someone they can commit to in the long run, a love that will continue over time. So, if a relationship is destined to last, this is where closeness enters the picture. The early passionate intensity may fade, but a deep affectionate attachment takes its place. Henceforth, people grow close by learning to give and receive (a good and healthy relationship is about both people, not how much one person can get from or give to the other); revealing feelings ( a supportive, caring, relationship allows people to reveal details about themselves such as their likes and dislikes, their dreams and worries, their proud moments, their disappointments, their fears, their strengths and their weaknesses) and listening and supporting (when two people care, they offer support when the other person is feeling vulnerable or afraid. They don’t put down or insult their partner, even when they disagree). Giving, receiving, revealing and supporting form a back-and-forth process which is a very prop of the fiancés for their love.

Then, let me take this good time to remind and to urge the lovers and especially the fiancés to bear in their minds that love is a powerful human emotion that experts, researchers and different thinkers are still studying constantly because it is a very interested theme that impress all people.

When you’ll be about to become a fiancé, you’ll have a look on how those who are called fiancés behave. I have seen that, the fiancés are always together, often smiling and playing and moving arm in arm and one is very concerned with the well-being of another in such a way one pay a visit to another constantly. Seeing that, I have concluded that romantic love has different good aspects which are inspiring. Those aspects are namely ‘the ability to talk about anything to your beloved’ because he or she is the most preferable person in your life at that time; ‘the honesty and trust’ because you are more confident in your sweetheart in such a way you tell him or her everything except nothing because you feel that he or she is a part of your body; ‘ the ability to be yourself with no pretense’ because, in spite of all critics or without taking into consideration any kind of sarcasm towards your darling, you still love him or her; ‘the fun and compatibility’ because when you are with your dear, you want to be viewed and admired by your friends and you want him to do so; ‘the equality’ because all of you you’re equal in such a way no one is more important or in charge and finally  ‘the respect for your dear’ because you owe him or her unconditional respect, love and you look for his or her welfare every day.

At that, romantic love is constructed and articulated on three different steps: attraction: this is the start point and the magical start of romantic love. It wakes up the mental, physical and even sexual interest that two people have in each other. It is responsible for the wish of feeling a huge affection. It is also what is behind the flushed, nervous and excited way we feel when the person is near. Closeness: this is the connection link that occurs and develops when the lovers share the thoughts and feelings that they never share with anybody else. When one has this kind of feeling with his or her sweetheart, he or she feels supported, cared for, understood, and accepted for who he or she is. Confidence is a big part of this. Commitment: this is the promise or the decision to still tight to the one you’ve chosen to be at your side throughout the ups and the downs to maintain good and appreciable relationship.

Let’s have a look on the following twenty quotes of love that have been put forward by famous personalities, poets, philosophers, and many other artists:

1. “Where there is love there is life”

 –Mahatma Gandhi

2. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow-this is a human offering that can border on miraculous”

–Elisabeth Gilbert

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peaces with Marriage

3. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know another way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate then when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

–Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

4. “You know you’re in love when can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

–Dr. Seuss

5. “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope”

–Maya Angelou

6. “I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul and to me, this has always been enough.”

–Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

7. “If I had a flower of every time thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever”

–Alfred Tennyson

8. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

– Lao Tzu

9. “We’re all a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness-and call it “love-true love.”

–Robert Fulghum, True Love.

10. “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

–Zelda Fitzgerald

11. “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life-to strength each other in all labor, to reset on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

–George Eliot

12. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”

–Edgar Allan Poe

13. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

–Plato

14. “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me my best.”

–Marilyn Monroe

15. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

–Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

16. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it be rather a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

–Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

17. “What is love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

–Victor Hugo

18. “When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.”

–Arrigo Boito                         

19. “Who, being love, is poor?”

–Oscar Wilde

20. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

–David Henry Thoreau

Throughout the above twenty quotes, I can say that when someone is in love, he has only sweet words that he tells to his sweetheart. Then he combines attraction, closeness and commitment to make his love very effective. For example, closeness without attraction is the love we feel for our best friends and an attraction without closeness is what is called infatuation or crush. In such a way, one is attracted by the physical aspects of the person whereas he does not know well enough yet to feel the closeness that comes from sharing personal experiences and feelings.

Then, the love between fiancés is the combination of the attraction and the closeness which are the basis of a romantic love. At that, some relationships grow out of an initial attraction such as crush or love at the first sight and develop into closeness, and sometimes it is possible that a friendship moves from closeness to attraction when two persons (a boy and a girl) realize that their relationship is strong in such a way they’ve become interested in one another in a romantic way.

The strength of the love between fiancés is somehow similar to the love for the first time because it shows a lot of feelings, but the difference is that at the first time it can be very hard to tell to the one who attracted you the weight of the love for him or her whereas when you are in love and especially when you are planning to marry your beloved, new feelings and physical attraction goes deeper and deeper as days go on.

Marriage is defined as a union of two or more people that creates a family tie and carries legal and/or social rights and responsibilities. It can also be defined as a union between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

Marriage is built on love. If there is not love, there will not be marriage because marriage is like a proclamation of a true love. The married, and especially the newlyweds.