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Eric Siu argues that love is a choice and active effort, not just feeling. He describes his relationship with Layla as built on respect rather than chemistry, and explains how mismatched priorities between partners breed resentment.
Eric Siu argues that love is a choice and active effort, not just feeling. He describes his relationship with Layla as built on respect rather than chemistry, and explains how mismatched priorities between partners breed resentment.
love is something that you decide to work on. It's like an active thing. It's not passive. I also think there's a lot of different versions of relationships. Like if you think about your friendships, like your friendships with like 7 different dudes that you know, you probably have— the relationship is different with all of them. And so I think like love is a really general word and we're just more limited by like our vocabulary than anything else. Like I think Layla and I have a very different love than most people who are married and together. But I would say that it is absolutely founded in respect. And that to me was probably the most unique aspect of my relationship with her was that I, I just respected her and she respects me and I would say until that point, I probably had the more traditional relationships that were just like more lovey-dovey, more chemically, more romance, etc. But the thing is, like, I'm a really extreme person. And so if someone doesn't like what I like, like, they're not going to see me very much. And if they are that way, anytime I do something, it's going to feel like I'm doing them a favor. Yeah. And that tally board of like who's doing who a favor is would get way out of whack really fast. And then I start resenting them because I'm like, I want to do this other thing. And it's not that I don't love you. Yeah, I just want to work.
