Romantic love

I accept you
To be no other than yourself,
Loving what I know of you,
Trusting what I do not yet know,
With respect for your integrity
And faith in your abiding love for me.
In all that life may bring us,
I pledge my love.
~~~~~~~from "Exodus, Gods and Kings", wedding vows
To love this way is easy. To accept that we are loved this way is difficult until we recognize that we do love this way and so it is not only reasonable, but possible to know and accept that the above describes the love with which we do love.
We love so readily and easily, we get caught up in whatever catches our attention. We engage easily and readily, almost helplessly. We are so comfortable with our nature to do so, we resist leaving whatever we are caught up in. That resistence causes conflict within that manifests without and we get caught up in it, resist coming out of that and on it goes.
To gain an observer's perspective and see how it all works, to gain "enlightenment", to "awaken" requires a greater degree of detachment and seperation from our very own nature of getting caught up in feelings, experiences, events. If attachment was not natural and normal, it would not happen. To become detached is to seperate from ourselves, seperation causes a sense of lack and deprivation which draws the experience and on that goes.
There is a time and place for all things: a moment for attachment to that which is outside of us (which is detachment from self) and a moment for non-attachment (becoming attached to one's own self, inner processes and understandings coming in). We are never one without the other, then.
It is HOW we attach and detach: how we choose which attachment to focus upon and how we engage in that focusing that makes us a "master" of relationship, places us in 'good' or 'bad' relationships which only boils down to "comfortable" and "uncomfortable". Everyone's idea of a 'good' relationship is going to depend upon their idea of 'good'.
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Lalit Arora with Sally Profota Scarborough and 2 others
2 hrs ·
Perfect explanation👏
Husband: I love you
Wife: I love you too, infact I love you so much I will fight the whole world for you
Husband: but you fight with me the most
Wife: because you are the whole world to me😳😂😂
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To some, that is a good relationship. To others it'd be hellish and abusive.
Relationships are basically investments. On what kind of relationship do we invest our attention, time, energy and resources? That which we invest in grows. That which we lose interest in, does not.
Relationships never end. We never truly leave oneanother. We are changed in some way by every relationship and that change stays with us, even if we physically move on. Thus, whatever was invested in us, was sourced from the person with whom we were in relationship, goes with us. They go with us to that extent. Every time we think of someone, every time we focus on that which was gained/given due to our interaction with them, we continue to invest in them, even from a distance. So, even if it is a matter of "I became stronger in the face of their abuse.", when we focus on our strength and wisdom, we focus to some extent on them/their investment in us. We perpetuate oneanother's existence, passing it on to our children and whomever else we influence/invest in. Relationship never ends.  It requires no pledge, for the nature of relationships cannot be uncommitted.
To understand the nature of anything: the human condition, abuse, etc, we must come into relationship with it and simply by doing so, we perpetuate it. It only diminishes when we lose interest in it. Anything can only be diminished in our experience, never truly gotten past/ended forever.
We can never be anything other than ourselves. Even if it is our self putting on pretenses, we are still ourselves, even if it is acting a certain way to please someone else we are ourselves acting.
We always trust what we do not yet know. If we didn't we wouldn't be interested.
If we didn't respect one another's integrity, we wouldn't find it wrth attempting to shake.
Abiding of love is the nature of our existence, it is the idea that we have a choice in the matter that is the illusion. We can only choose to acknowledge it and focus on it or not.
So, in truth, we all live these wedding vows consciously or unconsciously:
"I accept you
To be no other than yourself,
Loving what I know of you,
Trusting what I do not yet know,
With respect for your integrity
And faith in your abiding love for me.
In all that life may bring us,
I pledge my love."
~~~~~from "Exodus, Gods and Kings"
There's another theme that wants to come in here: What pops into my head is from the movie "Avatar". When becoming a hunter, the Navi choose an Ikran and the Ikran chooses them. The Ikran will only fly with one hunter for life. How do you know the Ikran chooses you? It will try to kill you. It reminds me of a belief about horses: if it hurts you and you take it, it will be loyal to you for life. When I was young I chose a pony out of a herd. It kicked me in the face and knocked me out. My parents asked "Do you still want this one?". "Yes!", I answered. I was the only one who could ride that pony. Any one else it reared or bucked off, usually in the pumpkin patch.
"That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and isn't love supposed to strengthen, build up, expand and increase us? "If you can take the worst of me, you can love me" seems to be a common theme.  And does that not qualify loving all of someone? Does that not qualify as loving despite the/no matter what condition they are in (unconditionally)? lol Are they not giving you opportunity to prove/practice your integrity? "Testing" is a very common theme amongst gods and men.