How true love goes beyond romance

Love is often defined in popular culture solely by the romantic sort. Most stories have, in some way or another, a romantic pairing; the couple drawn together inextricably by the events playing out. Sadly, these days it is ever more common to mistake even this simplified version of love for lust. This usually takes the form of a distractingly beautiful, breathtakingly sexy young woman who is most commonly dressed in shorts/short skirt/dress that must be torn and unfeasibly tight tops. How often, in real life, have you ever, ever seen a woman who both looked and dressed like Megan Fox in Transformers? And even if you have, did you ever see her with someone as unconventional looking as Shia LeBeouf? And in what way does she prove, throughout either movie, that she is truly worth of his stumbling adoration, beyond her ability to straddle motorbikes whilst fixing them in a manner that suggests she is about to mate with it. As a matter of fact she doesn't. Neither, for that matter, does he ever do anything that would suggest the reverse. It is a romance of convenience, the right kind of geeky and the right kind of sexy. I know, no one would expect Transformers to contain the greatest love story ever told amidst the, admittedly moving tale, of intergalactic robots decimating ancient relics, but it is far from alone. Many so called romances try and ram love down our throats (if you'll pardon the potential euphemism) and, yes, even the greatest love story ever told, Romeo & Juliet is not entirely innocent.

As I said at the start love is usually defined by this admittedly thrilling and tumultuous emotion we all experience and hope to capture and bottle with that one special person. But love is bigger and so much more than the muddled lust and desire for companionship that these romances offer. 

What of the love between parent and child?

What of the love between siblings?


These are also relationships that define us and the lives we lead. Perhaps there is no heartwarming romance to be had in such dalliances in the love of a parent. But consider the bond between mother and child for one moment. We are all children of mothers and that bond resides within us all. Even if that relationship has soured, it is still a far more untamed, raw bind than any romance can offer. What if you are the mother? Is the love you hold for your babies not the most heart-gripping, powerful sensation you have experienced? How can that love compare to the even the most intense love affair? Maybe it can, but such an affair is almost certainly lightning in a bottle, whereas the fierce and raw love a mother holds for her children is happening all around us. 

You may think this a curious example, but I would offer up Poltergeist as a testament to the use of a mother's love in fiction. It is the breaking heart of JoBeth Williams and the furious anger that she eventually summons up when her babies are yet again in danger,  that truly draw you in to this ordinary family's plight. 

Siblings, similarly, can create an unshakable bond that defies any outside romance. This is the union of two people who have grown from children to adults together and know the most intimate secrets that not even future lovers will learn. Assuredly these depths of love amongst siblings may be rarer, certainly, I suspect, in this era. But it is still, in my eyes a more thrilling and fascinating love, that is rarely capitalised upon well in fiction.

With such ripe and exciting emotions to be mined from this form of love, why then must we continually be hit with an onslaught of patronising love affairs, shoehorned into plots through, what I only presume to be lazy presumptions that every tale needs a boy to fall for a girl. I argue that any love, any relationship tested to breaking point and eventually reunited will be just as thrilling, likely more so, because we can all relate to the emotions. Can we all say we are lucky enough to have the all enduring love supposedly on offer in these stories? Assuredly and sadly, not. And when casting necessity causes characters to have dumped the supposed perfect partner in the inevitable sequel, why should we continue to care?


And here, for evidence I present to you the words of someone far more literate than myself. Ernest Renan, a French philosopher who lived in mid 19th Century Brittany, was effectively raised by his sister Henriette, 12 years his senior. He was a celebrated and sometimes controversial writer and she was his greatest support. During the writing of one of his seminal works 'The Life of Jesus', in which he daringly chose to tell the story of Christ as a biography, his Sister, who read and typed his work, passed away.


It is the dedication to her that begins the book that struck me as truly a moving definition of love between a man and a woman. The words that follow are all his and do they not speak volumes?

'To THE PURE SOUL of MY SISTER HENRIETTE, Who died at Byblus, on September 24th, 1861.

Dost thou recall, from the bosom of God where thou reposest long days at Ghazir, in which, alone with thee, I wrote these pages, inspired by the places we had visited together? Silent at my side, thou didst read an copy each sheet as soon as I had written it while the sea, the villages, the ravines, and the mountains were spread at our feet. When the overwhelming light had given place to the innumerable army of stars, thy shrewd and subtle questions, thy discreet doubts, led me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts, one day thou didst tell me that thou wouldst love this book -- first, because it had been composed with thee, and also because it pleased thee. Though at times thou didst fear for it the narrow judgements of the frivolous, yet wert thou ever persuaded that all truly religious souls would ultimately take pleasure in it. In the midst of these sweet meditations, the Angel of Death struck us both with his wing: the sleep of fever seized us at the same time -- I awoke alone! ... Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblus and the sacred stream where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, to me whom thou lovedst, those truths which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make it almost beloved.'