What Does Love Do?

Two things happened today that made me think about what it really means to love someone. What a person will do, and what they won't do to the person they love. I'm talking romantic love here, not the love we have for our children or other blood relatives, but the person whom we choose to be with.

I won't share the specifics of either so as to protect the privacy of those involved. But one was something someone said, and one was an act that I suspect was somewhat cultural, but appeared to have been the norm from my outside observers eye. Both made me hurt for the women involved. Now, it's very possible that neither woman actually felt any pain themselves because this might be acceptable to them.

But I have been thinking all day about both women, and all the women I know going through one thing or another in their own relationships. It's also made me think a lot about what I have accepted over the years in my own. What does love do to us? What does love do for us?

It's really the most amazing feeling in the world. To be in love is just fantastic. No relationship is perfect, we all have our fights, our things that we just learn to live with because while they may annoy us, they're certainly not deal breakers. But what makes us just take it when something isn't right? Even if it isn't something that we want to end the relationship over, why do we let it pass?

I guess those involved would say that it isn't that big of a deal or they would say something. Or that it's just the way that it's always been done. Or, they've learned to live with it. But, I know myself that these little things are sometimes bigger than we let on. That they eat away a little at a time at our soul. Maybe it stops with those little things, or maybe it grows into something worse. Maybe it impacts who we choose in our next relationship.

What keeps us from demanding better? Are we so scared of losing someone who loves us that we don't teach them a better way to treat us? What does love do for women that so many of us will give up part of who we are to keep it?