LOVE AND FOOTBALL: 5 THINGS SUPPORTING ARSENAL HAS TAUGHT ME ABOUT LOVE

One of the hardest things to be in life is an Arsenal supporter. Arsenal fans had to endure 3282 days of hurt, agony, disappoint and misery to final celebrate the club winning a trophy.  In that time, I have learnt a lot about love through supporting Arsenal. Okay, I just read your mind and I know what you are thinking. How can I base my knowledge of love on a bunch of dudes making mega bucks kicking some ball? To answer your question, I believe God uses anything to teach us. I mean, He used a donkey to teach a certain man in the Bible, right? So if He chooses to use a bunch of good looking young men (fyi, this decription only applies to Arsenal players) playing the round leather game to knock some love lessons into my thick skull, then yours truly isn’t gonna complain.

So, below are the 5 things supporting Arsenal has taught me about love.

1.     LOVE IS NOT A FEELING, BUT A CHOICE BORN OUT OF COMMITMENT

One of the commonest questions I get asked is why I stick with Arsenal, even after all the emotional and psychological trauma they put me through. Each time, my answer remains the same- love. I love Arsenal and that’s why I support them. Do I get mad and heartbroken when they disappoint me, season after season? You bet. But you see, if we are going to base our love for someone on feelings, we’ll end up being serial cheaters, who’ll never commit to anything or anyone. What keeps our relationship going during tough times isn’t the feelings we have for our partners. By now we should have known that feeling is like the weather- it is highly unpredictable. What keeps our love intact is the commitment we make to stick to the ones we love during trying times, especially during those moments when they fail to live up to our expectations and appear highly unlovable.  A wise person defined love as what remains after all the feelings are gone, and boy, if you can choose to stick with a club (or someone) even when you know they will disappoint you, then that’s love.

2.     YOU CAN ONLY LOVE PEOPLE RIGHT IF YOU LOVE THEM AS GOD DOES:

As humans, our love for people is often performance based. We love people as long as they are doing right, as in- saying the right things, not getting fat, being almost perfect, impressing us, not cheating on us, meeting our needs, etc. The moment they make a mistake or start being human, we start to gradually withdraw our love for them, or we even kick them to the porch. Take my Arsenal for example. First game of the just ended 2013/2014 football season, we lost 3-1 to Christian Benteke and his team mates at Villa Park, and boy, did Arsenal fans (myself included) go berserk.  Cries of ‘Wenger must go’ rent the air. Then, out of nowhere, Arsenal picked form and stayed top, and then boom, Wenger became the best thing that happened to humans since the discovery of ice cream. Then Arsenal’s form dipped again and the ‘Wenger Out’! single started  topping the charts . Do I blame the fans? Not really. You see, human love increases with performance and decreases with mistakes. But that’s not love. That’s not the way God loves. God loves us just as we are- win, draw, lose.  When you truly love people, you accept their shortcomings and love them through the process of making it through the wilderness.

3.     LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH

It was the final day of the 2013/2014 summer transfer window. I was glued to my TV screen, following the second by second goings-on in the transfer market. Particularly, I was waiting to see Mesut Ozil unveiled as an Arsenal player. When it finally happened, I was so overjoyed. Ozil is a player I’ve always admired and most Arsenal fans believed he was precisely what we needed for a successful campaign. We were in love. When the realities of the season set in, it became clear Ozil wouldn’t be enough to get us to the promise land. Some even began to question whether he was the one who was to come or if we should expect another. Ozil found it quite difficult adjusting to the physicality of the English league. He had the tendency of fizzling out in very key games. He got tired easily. Besides, he was just one player. He couldn’t play attack, midfield and defence all at once. In banking on the Ozil magic, Wenger forgot to strengthen other key areas of the Arsenal team. He didn’t have a bench that could do the job in case of injuries. Arsenal would go on to rue this decision.  Funny enough we do same in our love relationships. We believe once we ‘love each other’, everything will be fine. It was Kenneth G. Vaz who said, ‘When hunger walks in the front door, love jumps out of the window’.

It is immaturity at best and stupidity at worst to believe that all you need for a successful relationship is love. Believe it or not, love is never, and will never be enough. Just as you can’t build a successful team that will win trophies on just a single player, you can’t also bank the success of your relationship on love alone. Things like common goals, spiritual compatibility, similar value system, intellectual interests, conflict resolution techniques, children, etc are very important in relationships, and to overlook them is tantamount to relationship suicide.

4) LOVE IS FOR THE MATURE

It takes only mature people to do love right. This is because they understand that romantic love has 2 stages- romantic love stage and intentional love stage. In the romantic love stage, couples don’t have to work hard on the relationship. They are in love. They do everything to make each other happy. Just like a football team going through a wonderful spell. They have the best array of players. They seem to win everything in sight. It’s easy to love them at that point. What’s not to love? The problem is the romantic love stage doesn’t last forever.  When the romantic love begins to fade, we often get disillusioned. We even try to jump ship. That is why you often see people jump from one club to another, looking for the one team that will keep winning all the time, or the person that will keep them on an emotional high every single second. It therefore takes maturity to practice the second stage of love. It takes A LOT of work to keep love alive during this second stage of love. It’s easy to support a team that wins trophies in season and out of season. But sticking with a club that hasn’t won a pin in 9 years? That, my friend, is tough and therefore requires a lot of emotional maturity.

5) LOVE HAS NO END

What makes love the greatest is that it is forever. When we truly love people, nothing they do will ever change that. Even if they don’t win any ‘trophies’, we never stop loving them. This is because we know that love is not about us, but about the people we love. We make the commitment to love them anyway. That’s why I keep supporting Arsenal. Even they had lost the FA Cup final to Hull City, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. I would have still loved the club and my commitment to the team would have remained unchanged. You know why this is so? It’s because love simply has no end. When you truly love someone, it’s forever.

XoXo

Nawtiprof