“I learned that as much as you have room for love towards someone, as much as you have room for forgiveness. The minute the first room starts narrowing, the second room shrinks.” According to Oxford Dictionary, love is the strong feeling that you have when you like somebody or something very much.

That strong feeling that makes a person attracted to a certain thing or idea over another. For example, you see a certain restaurant and you fall in love with it, is that strong feeling due to the quality of food they serve, or is it the regulars that often visit the place, or is it a certain memory connected to that place that caused this attraction?

What is the chemistry that makes a person likes something to the extent that he/she cannot live without? Ironically, the same chemistry that would allows you to hate that same thing that you once loved. And usually the hate that follows it turns more viciously. Why does it happen? Why best friends become enemies and nations become foes? What causes this love to diminish and disappear and turns into something intolerable?

My list of questions can go on and on because my confusion is taking the best of me. Therefore, I decided to analyze this issue from a different perspective. Every living thing has a soul and each soul has its partner that completes it. It is like a jigsaw puzzle where each piece can only attaches itself to its rightful owner to form a clear image of the entire picture.

You might force two pieces to join but they will repel if the foundation and basis were not set for the right reasons. You need both your head and heart to find that missing piece of puzzle. Some may use either their head, heart or both. Whether it is right or not I may never know. However, what seems clear is that our brain was put there for a reason and that is to help us measure the consequences of our actions and to alert us if wrong choices or decisions were taken.

On the other hand, our heart helps us to be tolerable regarding our choices, sometimes forcing us to take risks. Therefore, I realized if we have a problem and we were asked to solve it, we would reach different conclusions if we were to use our head and heart separately or together. Thus, the decisions we make will determine whether we will allow forgiveness to take place or force a block in the relationship as a whole.

Sometimes ones self-interest comes before the interest of others, which causes a conflict between things. In Islam, we are taught to love for our brothers what you love for ourselves, and if we humans took that teaching literally we would find that this is an important and wise virtue towards building a relationship and a step back against failure and destruction.

Relationships that were built on week foundations and self-interest were most likely to fall out and be doomed because this allowed jealousy, hatred and evil schemes to come in between them. Another point I realized is that relationships and love is about sharing.

I do not believe the saying that states love expects nothing in return, that is because as humans we expect a return for our actions. This return might differ from one individual to another but at the end we all expect some sort of appreciation to our actions from the people we care about.

This can be in a form of a smile, a reward, a kind word or any positive gesture. For example, a mother who gives all her love and time to her kids, in return expects kindness and appreciation, yet she will never stop giving if she does not receive that emotional need but the hurt that she will endure might lead her to chronic sadness, thus leading her to en empty gap in her heart. Same goes between friends, business partners, married couples, nations but with differences regarding each situation and the degree of wants and needs between them.

When this is not given, the partner begins to step back. The tolerance of each person differs from one to another. Sometimes a person may tolerate a certain action from another but might not accept it from someone else. This all depends on how much you cherish that person and how strong the foundation of your friendship is based upon.

The feelings that we undergo through our lives towards the people we meet and the situations we encounter differs from one person to another. You can have great love and respect towards a certain person or thing but one mistake can erase all that and any room for forgiveness will be lost too in the way.

Why is that? Because the basis and foundation set upon this friendship was not properly intact. You might have believed that it was real but in reality it was all a myth. The feelings we share for others should be pure and unstained. Any outside factors like jealousy and selfishness will remove any amount of forgiveness and tolerance we might have for the other.

It is important to understand our own feelings before judging the feelings of others and see exactly why we feel the way we do regarding many aspects of our daily lives and to be honest with them. Then we will be able to understand why others react the way they do towards us.