Life is a continuous flux; everything is changing, moving. Nothing is static, nothing is permanent. You have been given the idea of a permanent love which is going to destroy your whole life. You will expect permanent love from the poor woman, and the woman will expect permanent love from you.
Love becomes secondary, permanence becomes primary.
And love is such a delicate flower that you cannot force it to be permanent. You can have plastic flowers; that's what people have -- marriage, their family, their children, their relatives, everything is plastic.
Plastic has one very spiritual thing: it is permanent.
Real love is as uncertain as your life is uncertain.
You cannot say that you will be here tomorrow. You cannot even say that you are going to survive the next moment. Your life is continuously changing -- from childhood to youth, to middle age, to old age, to death, it goes on changing.
A real love will also change.
It is possible that if you are enlightened your love has gone beyond the ordinary laws of life. It is neither changing nor permanent, it simply is. It is no more a question of how to love -- you have become love itself, so whatever you do is loving. It is not that you specifically do something which is love -- whatever you do, your love starts pouring through it.
But before enlightenment your love is going to be the same as everything else: it will change.
If you understand that it will change, that once in a while your wife may become interested in somebody and you have to be understanding and loving and caring and allowing her to go the way her being feels... this is a chance for you to prove to your wife that you love her. You love her -- even if she is going to love somebody else, that is irrelevant. With understanding, it is possible that your love may become a lifelong affair, but remember it will not be permanent. It will have its ups and downs, it will have changes.
It is so simple to understand. When you started loving you were too young, with no experience; how can your love remain the same when you have become a mature person? Your love will also attain to some maturity.
And when you have become old your love will have a different flavor to it. Love will go on changing and once in a while love will need just an opportunity for change. In a healthy society it will be possible and yet your relationship with someone will not be broken.
But it is possible that you may have to change your lovers many times in life. There is no harm in it. In fact, by changing your lovers many times in life you will be enriched, and if the whole world follows what I am saying to you about love, the whole world will be enriched.
But a wrong idea has destroyed all possibility. The moment your partner looks at somebody -- just looking, and his eyes show attraction and you freak out. You have to understand that if the man drops being interested in beautiful women on the road, in beautiful actresses in the movies... That's what you want; you want him not to be interested in anything except you. But you don't understand human psychology. If he is not interested in women on the road, in the movies, why will he be interested in you? His interest in women is a guarantee that he is interested in you, that there is still a possibility that your love can go on and on.
But we are doing just the opposite. Men are trying so that their women should not be interested in anybody other than themselves; they should be the only focus, her total concentration. The woman is asking the same, and both are driving each other mad. Concentration on one person is bound to lead you into madness.
For a lighter life, for a more playful life, you need to be flexible. You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love.
Freedom is a criterion:
Anything that gives you freedom is right, and anything that destroys your freedom is wrong.
If you can remember this small criterion your life, slowly slowly, will start settling on the right path about everything -- your relationships, your meditations, your creativity, whatever you are.
Dropping old concepts, ugly concepts....
-Osho, "Sermons in Stones, #13, Q2"
Love knows no jealousy, love knows no complaint. Love is a deep understanding. You love someone -- that does not mean that the other should love you also. It is not a contract.
Try to understand the meaning of love. And you will not be able to understand the meaning of love by your so-called love affairs.
Strangely enough, you will understand the meaning of love by going deep into meditation, by becoming more silent, more together, more at ease. You will start radiating a certain energy. You will become loving, and you will know the beautiful qualities of love.
It knows to say yes, it also knows to say no. It is not blind.
But it has to come out of your meditation -- only then does love have eyes; otherwise love is blind.
And unless love has eyes, it is worthless. It is going to create more and more trouble for you -- because two blind persons with blind expectations are not only going to double the troubles of life, they are going to multiply the troubles of life.
So be silent and be alert. Be loving.
And you can say no with great love. No does not mean that you are unloving; yes does not mean that you are loving. Sometimes yes may mean that you are simply afraid, it is out of fear. So it is not necessarily that love means yes and you cannot say no.
Love with eyes knows when to say no, when to say yes.
Love neither interferes in anybody's life nor allows anybody else to interfere into one's own life. Love gives individuality to others, but does not lose its own individuality.
-Osho, "Beyond Enlightenment, #13"