Article July 6, 2009 Issue

What does real love look like?

BY CAMILLE CARANDANG

Like many people in their 20s, I think about love a lot. As soon as I hit 21, I started seeking out Cupid—and like my friends, found myself constantly swimming in thoughts of romance. It seemed like many people my age equated the word relationships with romantic attachment, as if that's the only kind of relationship that really matters. It didn't help that the media perpetuated this perspective through movies and TV shows.

For a while, I wondered when my turn to be crazy-in-love would come. I kind of wanted the sappy romance, too—though I would never admit it. But I also didn't want to be sucked into this preoccupation with romance and have an unbalanced view of physical intimacy. Surrounded by the heightened emotions that came with my friends getting in and out of relationships, I was finding that my own ideas of what a dating relationship should look like were being challenged.

One of the things I began to see was that everybody is simply looking for love in their life in different ways. For some, romantic relationships become vicious cycles and roller coasters worth getting into (or putting up with) in hopes of holding on to this love. But if relationships are truly expressions of love, I thought, it was time for me to revisit the Bible and look at something the Apostle Paul wrote about love in First Corinthians 13. This passage, I figured, had to have some wisdom in it if it's repeated at weddings so often, right?