Can you really “grow” to love someone?

I’m writing this because I have a friend right now who is coming off of a relationship with a guy she considers the “best guy a girl could find.” She says that she knows no one could ever love her the way he does, and yet she feels guilty about not being able to give him the love she thinks he “deserves.” She’s basing her idea of him as “the one” for her on how well he has treated her in the past, and perhaps how well he is willing to treat her in the future. She says she’s not “in love” with him, but that she does care for him, and that she thinks that his love for her will be enough to get her to love him that way someday. My question, of course, would be: is that enough?

Is it right to think that you will eventually grow to love someone who loves you so much? Is having such a strong love coming from one person enough to sustain, or even help to grow the relationship in the future?

I’m not so sure it is enough, to be frank. Even if you did find someone willing to lay down his/her life for you, there is no real guarantee you could ever love him/her the way they deserve to be loved. There is no guarantee that you can feel the same sparks of passion and romance that they feel when around you.

But does love have to be similar between two people to work? Can’t someone just love someone one way, and be loved in return in another way entirely? I say, “sure,” but that still doesn’t change the fact that there should be some things they do have in common, such as a sense of romance. Call me biased, but if you can’t get warm and fuzzy feelings while having dinner with your “loved one” on Valentine’s Day, then surely, you need to try to find someone else. I just don’t feel that a real, lasting love can be sustained by one person’s undying devotion. For it to be complete, it has to be reciprocated. Both parties have to be in love for love to work, in my opinion. They don’t necessarily have to love with the same intensity each and every moment of their lives, but they shouldn’t also have any limits on how much they can love someone. If the only reason you have for being in love is, “well, he’s such a great guy,” then perhaps you ought to reconsider whether you are in love in the first place.

Think about it: if the bar for love were really so low, if all you really needed to do to guarantee someone would love you in return is to love purely and unconditionally, then there would never be such a thing as unrequited love. Men of all shapes and sizes would be able to date supermodels just because they “love them so much.” Women would be getting the men of their dreams just because they are so “devoted.” I’m sorry, but it all seems so, well, one-sided to me. Isn’t love a choice? Aren’t both people still responsible for making a serious commitment to each other? Should one person HAVE to love someone else just because that person loves him/her perhaps more intensely than anyone else? Should you have to love someone just because he/she is willing to do more for you than someone else? Should you have to love someone just because, in the past, they were really just so nice to you, and because they proved to you that they loved you perhaps more than all the other men/women in your life?

I don’t think so. I think that my friend should decide, not only on the basis of what he has done for her, or what he is willing to do for her, but also on how she genuinely feels about him. After all, what he really “deserves” isn’t for her to say, “I love you,” but to actually mean it. If she cannot give 100% of herself to the relationship… if somehow, she can’t even really say she loves him, then getting together with him would be, in my mind anyway, cruel. After all, if a guy is really so good as to pin all his hopes and dreams on someone, and to give his whole life and whole heart to her, then he deserves much, much more than to have her only say she loves him. She can’t give her love away piece-by-piece. If she’s not ready to love completely, then she’s not ready to love at all.