Written and verified by the psychologist GetPersonalGrowth.
Last update: 15 November 2021
In love, the heart and values ​​count, the only thing that really matters is what the couple wants, not what others think. Nobody should care if the age difference is great, if one of them is from Mali and the other from Poland, if she is tall and he is short, if he is thin and she is not ... Because love does not know sizes and has no time for the looks of the judge.
Let's face it, we live in a social reality where what is different bothers us, in which those who dare to break out of the mold or what is considered normal or desirable are instantly pointed out. We are shaped by a society that still whispers secretly when a woman is older in a couple. We live in a world where this happy and smiling young woman who holds the hand of a much older man is immediately criticized because she does not even remotely feel love and has only her interest in her heart.
"Love is not looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction"
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-
Not everyone is able to understand that these two people, who walk holding hands, feel only happiness, unlike those who gossip behind them (because they usually don't have the courage to do it directly in front of them). It doesn't matter whether one is tall and the other short, whether they are of the same sex or whether one weighs 100 kg and the other half ... This couple walks down the street like an icebreaker in the North Sea of ​​conventionalisms, leaving the iceberg of prejudices to his side.
Or at least it should be.
A courageous love, a love that doesn't care about prejudices
Mildred and Richard Loving fell madly in love when she was eleven and he was seventeen. They were undoubtedly very young, but this was certainly not the biggest of their problems. It was the 50s in Virginia and she was the daughter of an African American and a Native American of the rappahannock tribe.
Richard, on the other hand, was of European descent. At that time the Racial Integrity Act reigned, a shameful law that made a social distinction between white and "black" people, prohibiting marriage between the two groups. If that happened, there were only two options: jail or expulsion from the United States.
Yet none of this managed to stop our couple's love. In 1958, when Mildred turned 18, they decided to get married. However, a year later, when she became pregnant, a neighbor reported them and the two were separated. Richard Loving was put in jail. In 1964 Mildred Loving, exasperated by the situation, decided to write a moving and courageous letter to Robert Kennedy, who put her in contact with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Three years later, in 1967, the Loving case became a milestone in the triumph of social rights. The Supreme Court ruled that "the freedom to choose to marry cannot be limited by hateful racial discrimination"
If there is one aspect that it certainly amazes us about this story, it is that it only dates back to fifty years ago, and that progress in this area, as well as in the legalization of same-sex marriage, are such difficult goals to achieve and with extremely dramatic stories behind them.
In fact, many studies show that interracial and homosexual couples are the ones who continue to suffer the most from prejudice and the weight of the looks that often judge in silence.
Love knows no sizes: the heart makes differences in a relationship invisible
Love is much more than what Antoine de Saint-Exúpery told us in The Little Prince. It's not just about looking both in the same direction, there is also a need to look into each other's eyes every day to feed one's "couple conscience", to invest in what are known as the four "Cs" that define a strong and happy emotional relationship: compromise, cooperation, communication and sharing - or intimacy.
It is through these dimensions that the couple finds its strength to reach that cruising speed with which to break the social barriers of criticism and prejudice. Because one thing really tragic, which we will regret when the time comes to leave this world, is not being braveis not having loved when we could and should have, when we had this opportunity that rarely comes back.
The heart must be courageous and make surrounding differences and criticisms invisible. We will never be too old to love again, even though our children tell us: "at your age it makes no sense". We will not miss the boy or girl from our school or university just because our friends say: "he is weird", "he is fat", "not for you".
Only we know what is good for our heart, what warms our skin, what protects our soul and what gives music to our smiles. We advance in this society holding our love by the hand, like icebreakers in the sea of ​​hypocrisy, like colorful kites that don't need wind to fly ...
