Defining Love and Family

I feel compelled to write a blog about this. I had my friends round my house for a couple of drinks, when I say a couple by this point I had almost polished off two bottles of wine, and we started on a discussion about love and family! Different dictionary definitions and our own personal definitions on the ideas of love and family! We seem to disagree on what family and love means. Everyone has different definitions and this is what we use to define ourselves and our belief systems. I may be drunk, but I do have to write this down before I forget about this and it is completely erased from my memory.

I would consider family to be my mum, sister, brother, my nieces and my mum’s side of the family as they are the only people who I get to speak to on a regular basis. I haven't considered my father as family in over five years since we stopped talking. I wouldn't consider my father and his side of the family as family, because I don’t know them a well as my mum’s family, but others would as they talk to their fathers, and their fathers still play vital roles in their lives. We were also pondering the idea of being in love, but also when you consider your other-half’s family as family yourself. My friend Chris would have considered himself as part of his girlfriend’s family before he even decided to get engaged to her. My other friend Rachael, who hasn't been with her boyfriend Mark for as long would not consider his family as her family  until she got married to him, because without that bit of paper there is nothing tying her to his  family in any permanent/tangible way.

The same goes for love. I'm not in love with my friends, but sometimes I do feel that the word love is used so easily. I love my family, but that is a totally different kind of love from the love I have for my friends, and it would be a different kind of love again from when I fall ‘in love’. I would not use the words ‘in love’ until I actually have the feelings that I'm in love with someone, but I would say that I love my friends but I'm not ‘in love’ with my friends, and who would know that ‘in’ word would change the definition of the word love so certainly and so completely. The way we use words is as important as one insignificant word can change the meaning of our sentence so completely.