Understanding the complexity of love

Kofi Mframa, Opinions Editor

I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve never even had so much of someone liking me romantically or reciprocating my affection. As an observer of love, the fanfare surrounding it has always been lost on me. Everyday, I have more and more questions about the concept and with all the conflicting narratives that exist both online and offline, I could surely use some guidance.

Thus, I’ve employed the help of my friends, some who’ve been in relationships spanning three months to three years, to cut through the clamor and noise and get right to the heart of what it means to be in love.

VCU students Quan’Drez Mason and Austin McGhee finally mustered up the courage to talk to each other after being mutuals on Instagram for quite some time, according to McGhee. After a few hangouts, the two decided to make it official in early February and have been in love ever since.

“Learning to love someone is considering everything about them — pros and cons — and accepting them for things that they don’t necessarily like about themselves,” Mason said. “It’s just wanting to be around them and share experiences, like wanting to tell them everything and just experience life together.”

McGhee believes it’s love’s specificity that gives it its gravity.

“It’s more than a bond, it’s more than a partnership,” McGhee said. “When you say you love someone you really really have like a special connection within that you have with no one else.”

It’s this type of connection that’s always been fascinating to me. Love has always been more of a conscious decision to choose your partner over everyone else — a kind of mutual exchange of self.

I also had the chance to talk to my friend Stewart Anderson who is a third-year at VCU. He and his girlfriend of three years, McKayla Gantz, met in high school. Stewart admittedly loves a lot of things, but the love he has for Gantz takes precedence over everything.

“I just throw it [the word “love”] around like it’s nothing, but there’s only one person who carries the context of being the person that I want to spend my existence with — and that would be McKayla,” Anderson said.

Their connection got even deeper their senior year as they began planning out their prom outfits together. They officially began dating in March 2020, but COVID-19 would alter their relationship just as quickly as it began. 

Unable to meet in person, the two spent most of their early quarantine days on FaceTime with one another. 

With the pandemic making us interact more virtually than ever before, I’ve wondered how this has impacted our perceptions of love and relationships. Many of my friends’ relationships began on an app, but what impact does Tinder or Hinge have on how we give and receive love?

“I think online you can sometimes assume a person’s one way and it could be a little bit of a letdown when they’re the complete opposite when you meet them in person,” Mason said. 

As someone who spends a lot of time online, I find myself bombarded with all kinds of relationship content. This is no surprise to me because love is everywhere: It’s in every song, in nature, and every time I go outside it seems like everyone is holding hands.

It’s inevitable that people share their experiences with love on social media. However, for every cute couple edit, there’s a video of some more than questionable relationship advice. Specifically, so much of this advice perpetuates a traditional, patriarchal view of relationships that we as a society have worked to dismantle: “The guy should pay for this” or “the girl should behave like that.”

As a gay man, I’ve always wondered how I should navigate this rhetoric. Anderson uses different interpretations of what a relationship is “supposed” to be to get a deeper understanding of his own.

“It helps us understand the type of people that we are; it helps us understand boundaries in our relationship,” Anderson said. “I think we’re able to carve out our own definition of what we’re supposed to be.”

Many people online tend to live in absolutes when it comes to dating, ignoring the fact that people are complicated and nuanced thus our relationships will reflect that. Every piece of advice seems to be another mind game to trick someone into liking you — it’s like we’ve lost the art of being genuine. 

I’m a little less cynical than I was before, I think I believe in love a tad bit more, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have complete clarity on the subject. Love is so complex and I doubt any of us will truly ever understand it. All I hope is that everyone can experience true love at some point in their life — however it decides to manifest itself.