People have the right to fall out of love

Thandekile Moyo

I have never been dumped. Nobody has ever said to me, I’m sorry I don’t want to be with you anymore. That said, I have had a fair share of guys show me that they were not committed to being with me.

I have a very high opinion of myself and I place a high value on my time.

Because of that I vowed to myself I would never waste my time dating or loving someone who cannot love me the way I want to be loved.

I have established a way to turn off my feelings the moment I realise one is wasting my time. It is not easy, it is a painful, stressful and it’’s a depressing process but I believe it is one of those necessary evils.

I have found it is better to cut my losses than to exhaust myself chasing love. Because of that, I have dumped a lot of people in this long and exciting life of mine.

One truth I have come to accept is the fact that just because you love someone doesn’t mean they will, or should love you back.

We have a right to love anyone we want, but the people we love, also have the right to love whoever they choose, and you may not be the person they choose.

Another painful fact is that people have the right to fall out of love. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the love of your life waking up one day and telling you they do not love you anymore.

Love is not something owed to us by the people we love or do good things for, love is a gift given freely but which can be taken away anytime, sometimes without warning.

There is nothing more painful than knowing that somebody you love dearly wants nothing to do with you, or wants you on some days and on other days doesn’t.

As someone I respect always tells me, “human sexuality is unstable”, you can find yourself falling wildly in love with someone you should not even be looking at.

You can also find yourself hating someone you once vowed you would love forever, sometimes for no reason at all.

Most of us go through this but hide it from our significant others because society dictates that whoever falls out of love is villainous.

This “touch is a move” outlook on love is unfair and unrealistic because like it or not, people will fall out of love with you at some point. Most of us are hypocrites, when we fall out of love, we want to be set free but when people fall out of love with us we cling on to them for dear life and imprison them with guilt.

It is so sad that most of the people around us are trapped in non-working relationships simply because we have not accepted the simple fact that not only is it normal to fall out of love, it is ok.

People fall out of love due to various reasons, but I believe the most common reason is incompatibility. Most couples are just not compatible with each other.

It’s like trying to operate a DStv decoder with a Wiztech remote control. Like we used to chant in Mathematics at school, “it can’t”. Incompatibility occurs due to our different backgrounds, upbringings, personalities, attitudes, cultures and expectations.

We are always advised to take our time to get to know the people we get into relationships with before we date them and mostly before we sleep with them. This is because love, in its early days is electric and irrational.

When we first fall in love, we tend to put our loved ones on pedestals and think the world of them.

Everything they do is beautiful, everything they say sounds clever and we eat up whatever they tell us without the necessary doubt and suspicion.

It is in this phase that most men and women are duped into relationships or even worse, marriage to the worst possible partners for them.

This period where emotions and feelings are fever pitch high is the deciding factor of whether we get it right or we doom ourselves of a lifetime of misery.

The mature and sober-minded use the initial stages of a relationship to communicate their expectations from each other. This is the time to tell each other about our backgrounds, our histories and our plans for the future.

This is the time when we should be interviewing our potential spouses to find out if they are the person we want to spend forever with. This is when we realise that the man you are about to date is stingy and pig-headed.

During this period you can discover that the woman you fell for is a serial liar and talks non-stop! Unfortunately, most people just go straight to bed and get each other pregnant only to find themselves stuck in loveless marriages.

Because we do not take the time to get to know each other, we are shocked to find out that our spouses have irritating habits and mannerisms we just cannot tolerate.

Aside from pregnancy we have numerous other wrong reasons for getting married. Some people will fly to the alter with the first available person because they think they are fast approaching an age where they will soon be ineligible for marriage.

Some get married for financial security and others because they think that’s what’s expected of them. It is because of these reasons that we find ourselves stuck with people we are not compatible with.

Life is unfair and I have come to believe that only the brave can survive. It takes a lot of courage to tell someone you promised the world that you will be unable to deliver that promise.

It is not easy to tell your children that you are no longer in love with their mother and it takes guts to take a decision that will leave you forever unpopular.

The sad thing is that we hold each other at ransom and prevent each other from being happy.

The next time somebody breaks your heart and tosses you out like old trash just try to take a moment and ask yourself: what crime are they committing?