Love, actually (rehashed)

I've written about love quite a few times, dating back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and modems spoke in audible handshaking signals to each other, and blogs were web-pages lovingly created by hand.

I look back now and marvel at my naivete.

Love, when I was younger, was something that was given freely. You give yourself totally to someone, and what happens in return is immaterial. You have loved.

Then I grew older, and after the infamous story of K, felt the need to receive love, but was strangely unmoved when I did. I thought then in my self-obsession that I had perhaps lost the capacity to love.

Now I realise that relationships between two people are by definition dynamic, and bilateral (bicameral? heh). They need not necessarily be completely reciprocal, but a balance must be struck between giving, and taking.

Or else all you have is an effigy of a relationship.

Slide the balance too far to the left, and one becomes the giver, taken for granted; the other, the taker, wielding power and the right to be merciful, or not.

I believe now that to give love a chance at growing (after initial infatuation, aka the inaptly named honeymoon period), there must exist a mutual respect, and admiration - which can only exist with Balance.

Having listened to Sara on the phone (sounds like a song title. Sara on the Phone) for almost the entire night now... the question foremost in my mind is this.

Can there truly be Second Chances? And can love grow once the balance has been lost - will the slider ever be able to rest comfortably in the center again - or does petty vengeance and self-obsession invariably tilt the scales.

I wonder.