Every film protagonist has a romantic interest. Amidst the high-calibre, fast-paced action sequences, a little bit of romance always brings a refreshing change of pace. It helps the audience pause, to fantasise, to ponder what our lives can be; to simply dream.
We just cannot help but be fully involved in a blossoming on-screen relationship. Take Spiderman and MJ for example. Our social feeds were flooded with people obsessed over their chemistry a couple of months ago.
Yet, amidst our dreams of being involved in innocent love, a lot of us become dissatisfied. For many, our search for love becomes frustrating and even dismal. At the end of the day, we might be forced to answer this question: if we cannot find love in romance, where do we turn to?
It is easy to recognise that we all need to give and receive love, and a romantic relationship is a great way to do that, but when we rely only on romance for love, we can become disillusioned.
“True love” does not follow a fairytale and sometimes our love stories have terrible endings. So when the love we seek runs low, it helps to have a diverse view of love and pursue relationships that need not be romantic.
Here are four of the many relationships we can pursue to give our lives a wholesome balance. Three relationships that even Spiderman himself had and one that he probably will need.
1) Family
What do they mean when they say blood is thicker than water? Our family is the only relationship we are divinely given. We do not choose our parents nor our siblings; we are born into those relationships. Hence, we know the bond of blood is literally unbreakable. The love we receive from our family is different from any other kind of love, in that it is something that comes from deep within.
Familial love is easy because no effort needs to be made to form a relationship with the other party. We have known our parents, uncle, aunt, sibling, or cousin since we were born and all we need to do is put effort into knowing them on another level.
We even see in the Spiderman series how Peter Parker tries to protect Aunt May and how she shows support to him when she found out who he was. Love that is borne from their familial tie, wanting what was best for each other. Show some care to your family, because once a good relationship is established, familial bonds are logically and emotionally hard to separate.
2) A Close Friend
Two is better than one. While it is often possible to go out on a journey alone, having a companion always makes our long passage easier. When riding through tough times, having someone to cry with or even complain to brings us comfort. It does not matter how the bonds form, but the love from a friend is something we can always treasure.
If I could draw an example from Spidey again, the ‘man in the chair’ that Ned offered to be for Spiderman was probably the most essential part of Spiderman’s victory itself. Knowing that he had a friend that he can call on was especially crucial for him, emotionally.
If you are lucky to have friends by your side, I encourage you to foster those friendships, aim to go deeper with them, share in their struggles as they share in yours. If you lack the available friendships, go out and be open, meet new people and find communities of people that resonate with you. Best friends are gems that need searching, but having one will always be worth the effort.
3) A Mentor
Being young is never easy. You are constantly heading into new phases of life, having to fend for yourself in a new environment, and learning to get by in unfamiliar territory. When we were little, we had parents or guardians to teach us what to do, but as we go into tertiary education, their help might be less relevant when we start to enter the unknown.
During times like these, when nothing seems clear, it becomes essential to have a mentor. A mentor is someone who has been through everything you are going to go through. It is the person best placed to give sound advice to you. Someone like a ‘Tony Stark’ to us, a person that knows the situations we are in and knows what we are thinking. Love from a mentor comes in the form of practical help and level opinion. A mentor-mentee relationship is one that will really help us grow.
4) A Mentee
We learn best by teaching. It forces us to internalise our knowledge and understand it before we guide someone. In life, we might experience many life-changing moments, but they will all stay as mere moments if we neglect to reflect upon them.
Mentoring someone allows us to reflect upon what we have gone through in order to give a measured solution to their problems. Spiderman has yet to have a mentee but just imagine how much he will learn from it, much like Tony did when he became a mentor himself.
We can begin by finding a junior that needs help or looking out for a nephew or niece who is in their own transitional period. Offer to be available to them, hear them out and share with them your experience.
We are all relational creatures and so we all need love. We, however, tend to view love in a very one-dimensional way. Fortunately, love is so much bigger than the warm feeling we feel when we meet our crush, it can be practical, emotional, and it can come in many different forms.
A couple of months ago, we readily poured our support over the love of Spiderman and MJ, but many of us forgot to recognise the different relationships that shaped Spiderman himself: his best friend, Nate, his mentors, Happy and Tony, and his family, Aunt May. If you think you are out of love, think again, love is closer than we imagine.
