By: Manoah Kikekon
The 21st century concept of love is what I will address as “a new breed of love”, because what we see today is not what the word(love) was known to portray.
If Wikipedia should describe love as “a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure”. Then I can define the new breed of love as a range of weak and negative mental state of less virtue or bad habit, without affection, encode with selfish intentions.
A new breed of love is a relationship which prioritizes selfish interest over affection. And this had done more harm than good to human relationship. Where people weigh their gains before going into a relationship and not the unconditional feelings that love portrays.
The new breed of love is more of professing and material inclined than what love is known for. What we see today is bestowing materials of various magnitudes on partner serving as an evidence of love. This gave birth to the discussion of a new breed of love and how much damage it has done to true love and to various lives.
I won’t want my readers to get me wrong, this is not to mean true love does not exist anymore, but it should be clear that the larger percentage of the youths that profess to be in love today possess the new breed of love I’m talking about.
In any relationship people are planning to go into today, the first thing they consider is what they will gain from the relationship. I doubt if anyone is ready to go into a relationship that does not hold a profit today. This is the breed of love we have among the youths today.
I can tell you categorically that this new breed of love has done more harm than good to our society and humankind.
The first damage is ideological falsehood and secondly mental breakdown. As a result of this new breed of love, there have been the development of an idea that there is no true love anymore. Which has wildly spread among the young people. Where a lady will always see every man that approaches her as a hunter aiming in-between her laps. This false thought had led to lost of suitable partner and genuine lover.
The new breed of love had also led to the mental breakdown of many, when one of the partner possess the true love and the other posses the new breed, and the person possessing the true love eventually discovered he or she have been deceived, some may never recover from the trauma.
A friend thought he was in true love with a lady, fortunately the love she had for my friend was the new breed. After several months of being in the relationship, my friend told the lady he needs to know her parents. It was then the lady told him that her second partner had just asked for the requirements to pay her bride price which she had given to him, and she can’t continue with my friend anymore.
This led to a total breakdown of my friend. He felt very sick with serious internal pains. It got to a point where everyone could visibly notice something was wrong with him. It took me an intense talk to convince him he can still get a good lady who would truly love him, and not to generalize that all ladies are the same.
Various ladies who had experienced heartbreak will always say all men are the same, which I have taken upon myself to preach and campaign against. Letting them know that the Judas partner possesses the new breed of love and not the true love.
Several people have raised the question of how to differentiate a true love from the new breed of love. The answer to this are shrewd in riddles, which can be unravelled only through a critical study of the intentions of the partners.
Ability to identify both types of love differently is the first most important step.
The fear of the new breed of love is the reason some people get married to animals or doll, they believe the animal will remain loyal and committed. These are some of the damages the new breed of love had done to the society.
People engaging in various unethical sexual activities today justify the act by the unpleasant love life they had gone through. Where they eventually concluded that self satisfaction is the best, which is never true. It will take a counsellor several months to correct this ideology. Because thanew breed of love had done deep damages.
I fear what the nearest future of love will look like. If this new breed of love is not curtailed, it may mutate to a higher breed, which may lead to the end of true love.
I beseech lovers, to desist from the practice of the new breed of love. Together we can extinct this breed to save our society and save humanity.
Manoah kikekon. Is a graduate of History and International studies, from Lagos state university. A journalist and a Blogger.