Reflexions on Valentine´s day

Today is Valentine´s day here in Belgium where I am living during the last six months. It is interesting to see something like this here. In Brazil, our celebration is on June, 12th. Of course, as I am living aboard, I just send a message to my sweet valentine, Andrea, who is in Brazil right now, working (someone has to do this in this relationship..hehehe).

During the day, after stay in the theology´s library, I had to go to the supermarket to buy some bread and another stuffs. There was a lot of people there, what is unusual for the time I went. But, as today is Valentine´s day, I supposed the crowd was there to buy some ingredients to make a dinner or something special for their beloved. During my walk to the supermarket, I saw men walking with flowers, probably to give to their partners in the hope to get some smile back or some gift in return. It is amazing how the celebration of love can make us believe in the society and in the good intentions of the people.

When I arrived in home, after a while, I started to think about those who don´t have a valentine today. In Brazil, and I believe that the same occurs around the world, it is a sad moment for many people. It is common we want someone to share our thoughts, our feelings, our laughs, our sex, and so on. One can say that have friends and friends are amazing etc, but I believe that, in the most of the cases, these people would prefer to spend today with a boyfriend or a girlfriend than with a friend.

In Brazil, it is very common that this loneliness transform in despair and, because of that, men and women try to find someone just to avoid to pass the day by themselves. The chosen person for that doesn´t have necessarily to have something in common or to be beautiful. The only thing that is necessary is that he or she is available for part of the night for a dinner, or watch a movie, or something similar. The reason for that, in the most of the cases, is to avoid to feel yourself alone in the most romantic night of the year. 

In the Occidental World this is still very common. We, in somehow, were taught that stay alone is bad and be with someone means that you are accepted and you´re a normal person. Even if this person doesn´t have anything in common with us. The important is not to be alone.

I was alone for a long time. My first relationship was when I was 21 and didn´t workout. My second relationship was for just 4 months and was a real stressful one. Nowadays, my relationship is with my wife Andrea, who is an amazing wife and I love her a lot. 

My time alone, however, make me realize that most important than to be with someone, it is to be with someone who has the disposition to walk with you and to make your dream one of her or his dreams. 

Why do I say disposition? It is because this doesn´t happen from one day to another. It is take time, patient, friendship and, specially, disposition. The couple need to want the relationship workout and go forward. Otherwise, it doesn´t matter how gentle and beautiful he or she is, if there isn´t the same disposition, this won´t last. I have sure that, with the grace of the Lord, this disposition that helped Andrea and I to construct the love we have now.

I myself really like to talk about relationships. Maybe because of all the suffering I had before, it is a topic that I always come back to it. My friends, specially the women, are those who suffer with that because I always raise the topic and try to make conversations about it, which I know, sometimes is really boring, despite the gesture of caring that, for me is implied when I keep asking about it. 

Some of this friends, once, asked me for the love of God to stop to ask her about it and, of course, I did it. Nowadays, this friend is married and I´m happy for her. Once she told me that I helped a lot with all the conversation we had which makes me feel very happy as well.

Nowadays it is another loved friend that I am making suffer with these kind of questions, It seems to me that I have the gift to be, somehow, inconvenient. This is one of the things that borrows me and try to find out why I keep doing that it is a good topic for my discussion with my psychologist when I return to Brazil.