First of all, please forgive the tardiness. I've been dealing with limited free time and technical issues, but I'm back now.
As a race, we humans have a good deal to be proud of. In the span of a few thousand years we have advanced from living in mud-daub huts and hunting with bows to setting a man on the Moon, and we aren't quitting yet. Scientific and technological progress, general consensus and statistics show, is a good thing. But what of social progress? Is that always a step forward, a step in the right direction? Certainly no one can sensibly argue that the great civil rights victories won in the past two centuries have been bad things; women's suffrage, worker's unions, and desegregation have brought society towards equanimity; by no means is our work done, but we're a good deal closer to that goal than we were in, say, 1920.
But there come times when social progress, rather than lifting society upwards, instead corrodes its foundations, stunting its growth instead of hastening it. One clear example of this is the "Sexual Revolution" that swept campuses and cities across the country in the late '60s, and in many ways is still playing out today. Look what the movement has won for us: it's now acceptable, nay, encouraged to go out and hook up with multiple partners; cheating is seen as a permissible, even silly thing; people who take dating relationships seriously at a young age are considered emotionally immature by those who prefer to "keep things casual", instead of the other way around; the term "slut" is discouraged not because it is a rude and offensive term in general, but because a small (but growing) minority of young women wear the word as a badge of pride.
In short, the sexual revolution has changed the way many young people view relationships: in terms of sex, rather than love.
The modern M.O. seems to be a cavalier disregard for the feelings of everyone involved in a romantic situation save for one's own; that, if one does not find what he or she is looking for in a particular partner in the way of physical attraction and attention, then one is free and encouraged to find greener pastures elsewhere. This in turn implies that the focus in a relationship is not upon how to make a partnership last, but how to make it exciting in the moment; rather than searching for a deeper emotional, intellectual, and spiritual connection, many are satisfied with sex and sex alone.
We have created this society ourselves, either by actively participating in this change or being silently complicit. For those who reject this new approach to relationships, it can get rather lonely. Johnny Cash put it best, in his song "Solitary Man":
I've had it to here, being where
Love's a small word;
A part-time thing,
A paper ring.
Love, genuine, lasting love, is hard. Very, very hard. It requires work, it requires patience, it requires forgiveness and strength. When we get over having a crush on someone and settle into a deeper relationship, we realize that while that person is the most special person in the world for us they are, at the end of the day, human. They may have bad table manners. They might leave the toilet seat up. They might snore loud enough to rattle the windows. They might be exactly like you, warts and all. Great. They might have totally different interests from you, different friends, different passions, different habits, and hey, that's ok too. Every relationship has the potential to work in the long run, but only if those involved focus on long-run things. If we only have sex on the brain, then we place an expiration date on every relationship we have, and we are unlikely to find love in the truest, fullest sense of the word.
Our culture, as it exists today, places sacrosanct importance on the right of the individual to have whatever he or she desires, and to have it now. True love goes against this. Love is a rejection of the self for the other. True love is saying "I have things that I want, but I'm willing to put those off or forego them completely for this person." True love is not a fleeting flash of carnal passion, but a promise; a promise to work hard, stay the course, and make sacrifices for the one you love, because they're worth it.
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