![\"Searching](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cvm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/searching-for-love.jpg?resize=560%2C315\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Love is one of the strongest desires of the human heart. We sing about it, paint about it, and write poetry about it. Our TV shows talk about it. The Internet is full of it, and magazines tell you how they think you can achieve it. I have Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets on my iPhone and The Notebook<\/em> is available to stream online at any time should you so wish.<\/p>\n We love to talk of love and yet we live in a time when the largest single cause of death for a man under 35 in many Western nations \u2013 including ours \u2013 is suicide. Deep loneliness abounds. How do we explain this?<\/p>\n The world we live in today is more connected than it has ever been. We can send messages to other side of the world in just a split-second. I can chat to colleagues 10 time zones away effortlessly. I can stay connected with all my secondary school friends on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n My favourite comedian – Billy Connolly – when he as filming a travel show for TV and was left alone on a polar cap for a night quipped, \u201cThere\u2019s a difference to being alone and being lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n Now wouldn\u2019t you agree that there is something wrong in a world filled to the brim with messages and promises of love when at the same time there\u2019s a vast amount of people drowning in despair without it?<\/p>\n Things are changing in our culture. We get married later, if at all. It\u2019s easier than ever to hook up \u2026 and break up. And who of us likes break ups? So we seek alternatives to mitigate the pain.<\/p>\n Maybe if we avoid the commitment we\u2019ll avoid the grief. So, no-strings-attached then. We\u2019ll move from romantic encounter to romantic encounter and avoid the sting that comes from hanging around too long. Except that this doesn\u2019t seem to fix the problem either.<\/p>\n The British feminist author, Natasha Walter, wrote a book in 2010 called Living Dolls. <\/em> In her book Walter explores the pressures many women face in this hypersexual culture to conform to image. Walter asks if our supposedly more enlightened culture is in fact in many ways robbing women, not empowering them.<\/p>\n More than ever, men and women today are incredibly free to do what we want with out bodies. Old cultural and social restraints have been replaced with an \u2018it\u2019s your body, do you want\u2019 approach. But this new liberation hasn\u2019t led to satisfaction for many. In the book, one 17 year-old girl, Carly, tells her story.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all casual sex now, nobody talks about love,\u2019 she said \u2026 I wish I could have a real connection with a man. But there\u2019s no courtship any more. That\u2019s all dead. It\u2019s just immediate. There\u2019s no getting to know someone, you\u2019re expected just to look someone up and down and make the decision just like that, are you going to have sex or not? There\u2019s no time to build up to a connection. The idea is that you have sex first, but how are you meant to create the kind of excitement, the emotional connection, after that? I want to have an emotional connection with a man. I want it to be there with the feeling that I am equal to him. I do think I\u2019m as a good as a man. But I don\u2019t want just this no-strings sex stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Our appetite for our desires to be fulfilled can lead us to look for fulfilment in the wrong areas. Our desires crave fulfilment, but we must use wisdom to discern what is best for us. Our appetite for food, for example, cares not how it is fulfilled \u2013 only that we do something to address the hunger. But we know that if we choose the giant bag of Jelly Babies over a well-balanced meal, we will pay for it in the long run.<\/p>\n Life can leave many with an empty feeling inside, causing us to reach out for connection, only to find that our efforts for love and intimacy in the end leave us feeling even emptier.<\/p>\n In our deep desire for love we can rush head long after the feeling and in the process we can get make some bad choices. Bestselling author Tim Keller, says that:<\/p>\n \u201cOur fears and inner barrenness make love a narcotic, a way to medicate ourselves, and addicts make foolish, destructive choices.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Many of us will have at times made bad choices and experienced broken dreams. Small or large, things don\u2019t always pan out the way that we want them to.<\/p>\n I have my broken dreams too. Today, I\u2019m happily married to a wonderful woman whom I love greatly and who also loves me.<\/p>\n Before I met my wife there were a few other relationships which ultimately didn\u2019t work out. Upon reflection they didn\u2019t work out in part because in some cases I wanted too much from them.<\/p>\n I knew that I wanted love but I whilst maturing well in a few areas of life in love I was a like a toddler.<\/p>\n Foolishly thinking that my romantic gestures were genuine I didn\u2019t realise that all my efforts were really just a way of showing love in order<\/em> to receive love! I was living for those moments of acceptance based on how I made someone feel.<\/p>\n Well, I couldn\u2019t keep with this. It wasn\u2019t long before cracks began to show.<\/p>\n I longed to be loved. But like a 14 year old with a poster of a Ferrari on his wall who\u2019s suddenly given the keys to an F12 Berlinetta there\u2019s a world of difference between desiring something and knowing what to do with it when you have it.<\/p>\n Many relationships don\u2019t last because we want too much from them. Perhaps you can relate? Out of desperation to be loved ourselves, we love someone expecting total fulfilment.<\/p>\n But hang on a moment? Have you seen these people we love?! Even the best of us let people down.<\/p>\n The reality is, that when we love something or someone who is not perfect and expect perfect fulfilment from them, we will always end up hurt.<\/p>\nA Shift in Culture<\/h2>\n
Broken Dreams<\/h2>\n
Unmet Longing<\/h2>\n