– I don’t know why love doesn’t happen in my life!
Hearing that hurt more than a punch in the stomach.
– Didn't I happen in your life, so-and-so? – I replied to an ex-girlfriend, with whom I hadn't spoken for a while and who had now decided to ask me for sentimental advice.
– Ah, I wanted to love cinema!
My ego lost its senses with the blow of those words. Certainly, for her, our love was nothing more than a love of, at most, a pirated DVD.
– Fulana, the entire time we were together I loved you with all the strength of my molecules. My days were all about finding ways to make you happy. I respected, desired, admired and supported you in every second of our relationship and, even after we separated, I remained loving you for a long time. If this isn't movie love, I don't know what is.
But, at this exact moment I realized that I had a movie love, but she didn't.
“Ado, aado, each one in their square”, says the funk song “Dança do Quadrado”. We are, first and foremost, individuals. We have our points of view, our experiences, our moral and psychological baggage, and although we love and are deeply involved in a relationship, we are still separate entities.
When we relate, we remain within our square and love, at the intersection of both.
Each one has a particular vision of this love, based on several factors such as maturity, traumas, experiences and expectations. Each one observes the same love, but from her own perspective.
- You do not have time for me! – Says the currently unemployed partner to her girlfriend who is swamped with work. Based on her own availability, she believes that the other person does not pay attention to her.
– You're suffocating me! – She replies to the other, who, unable to bear any more pressure, ends up feeling pressured by her partner.
They are two completely different views of the same relationship. The one who is unemployed has all the time in the world to dedicate to the relationship while the other finds herself divided between several tasks and resents realizing that her partner does not realize that love has not ceased to exist or diminished because, in that moment of life, she could not dedicate herself fully to another.
Without realizing it, they move away. One because she feels rejected and the other because she feels pressured.
Little by little, the intersection of their “squares” becomes diluted and when they realize their worlds no longer intersect.
The fact that we are independent, however, does not prevent us from leaving our square, crossing the line that separates our lives and observing the relationship from the other's perspective.
If the partner who feels rejected had observed the relationship from the other's perspective, she would have seen that her need, at that moment, was for patience and understanding. If the busy partner had looked at the relationship from the other's point of view, she would have seen that it was enough to convey the security that love would not be affected by the temporary distance between them.
By remaining in the “squares” themselves, they allowed love to lose its elasticity and fixation capacity and “loosen the squares” that had been trapped under its grip.
Everything in life is a matter of point of view. So, why not try to see something from different angles? Especially if this small gesture is capable of saving a relationship.
* Nina Lopes is still trying to resurrect her own ego and waiting for someone with whom she can experience a love like that in cinema. For both.
