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| Life feels beautiful because love exists. |
A person can fall in love with more than one person at the same time in their life. Gabriel García Márquez is said to have made this remark. Love is eternal, and true love happens only once in a lifetime. There are many debates about such claims, and research too. Does love come only once in a person's life? If so, why do people break off one relationship and get involved in a new one? Out of necessity, because of life's realities, or by their own choice? The heart cannot really tell whom or what it wants.
The Huffington Post once conducted a survey of two thousand men and women. It found that 73 percent believe people fall in love seven times in their lives. However, one-third of the two thousand respondents believe "true love" happens only once. Some people also fall in love with the same person more than once. 17 percent of the men said they had fallen in love with someone else while already in a relationship, and they are currently with that second partner. Assuming a kind of "compromise," they call this "true love." 45 percent of the men have been in more than one relationship at the same time. 39 percent of men and women said they had fallen in love once in their lives. And 47 percent had fallen in love only once, and married that partner.
The kinds of love also differ. Some are first loves; some are just for passing the time, or are airy, insubstantial romances. Some are only for the thrill. Some call "ultimate love" the one that ends in building a home together, the one with whom they decide to share life's joys and sorrows. Even within this, a peeking-in kind of love can appear. Most men and women are not serious about that kind of love at the start. But some, by slipping up or for other reasons, end up choosing a second partner.
Many believe that falling in love repeatedly is a matter of fate. That is not so. They themselves choose another love.
The Guardian conducted a survey of three thousand people. It found that one in every five people is in more than one relationship at the same time. They do this more often with colleagues and friends. They are also happy in their personal lives, and their relationships with their partners are good. Yet they have become involved with someone else.
Of them, 25 percent have been in another relationship alongside their main one for five years. 29 percent of men and 19 percent of women have ended their marriages because of a second relationship. The urge to have multiple relationships appears strongest after the age of 60 and around the age of 30. Even after receiving love, they feel they are not getting what they want. They are never satisfied with anything in life. The mind is always searching for something new.
I began with Márquez. Let me end with his words too. He said, "The most important thing in married life is not happiness, but permanence."
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