In their book, “Metaphors We Live By,” linguistics Mark Johnson and George Lakoff suggest a really interesting solution to this dilemma, which is to change our metaphors. So they argue that metaphors really do shape the way we experience the world, and that they can even act as a guide for future actions, like self-fulfilling prophecies. Johnson and Lakoff suggest a new metaphor for love: love as a collaborative work of art. Linguists talk about metaphors as having entailments, which is essentially a way of considering all the implications of, or ideas contained within, a given metaphor. And Johnson and Lakoff talk about everything that collaboration on a work of art entails: effort, compromise, patience, shared goals. These ideas align nicely with our cultural investment in long-term romantic commitment, but they also work well for other kinds of relationships, short-term, casual, polyamorous, non-monogamous, asexual, because this metaphor brings much more complex ideas to the experience of loving someone. So if love is a collaborative work of art, then love is an aesthetic experience. Love is unpredictable, love is creative, love requires communication and discipline, it is frustrating and emotionally demanding. And love involves both joy and pain. Ultimately, each experience of love is different. So when I was younger, it never occurred to me that I was allowed to demand more from love, that I didn't have to just accept whatever love offered. Reframing love as something I get to create with someone I admire, rather than something that just happens to me without my control or consent, is empowering. It's still hard. Love still feels totally maddening and crushing some days, and when I feel really frustrated, I have to remind myself: my job in this relationship is to talk to my partner about what I want to make together. And this isn't easy, either. But It's just so much better than the alternative, which is that thing that feels like madness. This version of love is not about winning or losing someone's affection. Instead, it requires that you trust your partner and talk about things when trusting feels difficult, which sounds so simple, but is actually a kind of revolutionary, radical act. This is because you get to stop thinking about yourself and what you're gainning or losing in your relationship, and you get.to start.thinking about what you have to offer. This version of love allows us to say things like, “Hey, we're not very good collaborators. Maybe this isn't for us,” or, “That relationship was shorter than I had planned, but it was still kind of beautiful.” The beautiful thing about the collaborative work of art is that it will not paint or draw or sculpt itself. This version of love allows us to decide what it looks like. Làm đẹp đẹp