Love as an exponential multiplier

Lately I’ve been reading a lot.

Really. A lot. 

Almost entirely romance novels. It’s clearly an escaping technique. I find that in the sheer quantity that I’ve read, I manage to pick up some patterns here and there.  I’ll share one that has really started to rub me the wrong way. 

There are lots of different reasons our protagonists are going to be challenged in their efforts to get together. One that I’m somewhat drawn to (the nature of the beast) is that one of them is a widow or widower. 

I’ve noticed that in nearly all of these stories there comes a point where the other person freaks out and acts out because they feel less than or that somehow they cannot compare to the person that’s been lost and the love they shared. 

I can imagine that there are all sorts of emotional landmines and booby traps to fall into as you navigate this new path together. 

I just feel like this is a sad view of love from a scarcity mentality. It’s my experience that you don’t have a finite amount of love that is divided among all the loves in your life but a s each person is added it is multiplied and expanded exponentially. I don’t think that if you have more than one child they each get less love. In fact I think it increases. 

Love is not a divider, it is an exponential multiplier. 

For me, anyone who wants to be with me in the future needs to understand that I will always love my husband. And that does not take anything away from him. 

If he can’t, then I won’t want to be with him.