What is love?

Fair warning, this post contains lots of spoilers for Doctor Who all the way through series four. So if you've watched it, never plan on watching it, or just don't care, read on. Over my Christmas break, I spent a lot of time re-watching and watching Doctor Who. A show that my mother described, after watching a couple episodes, as funny and weird and tragic, which sums it up quite perfectly. I, like many Doctor Who fans, am really enamored with the Doctor's relationship with Rose Tyler and I've been thinking about why that is. Why their relationship has captured my attention so completely. And I think I've finally sussed it out.

In our culture today we're given examples of love that declare that anything is permissible and even praiseworthy if it's done in the name of love. We're a culture obsessed with relationships like Bella and Edward's. Where Bella will forsake her family, friends, and even possibly her soul for the sake of the man she loves. But this is a weak love. I don't mean weak in its intensity. I mean weak in the character of the love. Edward even admits that he's being selfish when he returns to Bella, that he is weak. It's a selfish love. A love that will forsake everything for its beloved. Now you're sitting there reading this possibly thinking that that's how love should be. That true love will give up anything for that other person.

But stop a moment and think. Think about what that really means. Think about how ugly and twisted that love could become. The horrors that could be committed in the name of that love. A good example of this in classic literature is Paradise Lost. In Milton's epic poem the fall of man occurs because Adam cannot bear to lose Eve, so he too eats the fruit damning the human race. That is a selfish love. A love that thinks of no other but its beloved. If that's true love, I never want it.

That love rings false and hollow to me. It's an inward focused love. Love takes into consideration more than just the two people involved. Love does means sacrificing for the other person, yes, but not sacrificing anything and everything. And this brings me back to the Doctor, self-sacrifice personified. The Doctor has had many companions to accompany him in his journeys through space and time, but only one since its sixteen year hiatus made her presence felt even in her absence - Rose Tyler.

Before the Doctor and Rose are separated, she comments that she can't leave him because otherwise who will be there to hold his hand, that he's always out there alone, but not any more. Because now he has her. But he loses her. Throughout series three, we watch the Doctor trying to cope with that loss. But in trying to find a way back to the Doctor, Rose discovers a threat against reality itself. Plucky girl that she is, she finds her way back to him. And they do it. They save reality again, but at a cost, as the Doctor reminds us. That cost is a half human, half Time Lord version of the Doctor born of war and violence and blood. Though he has been mourning the loss of Rose, he returns her to Bad Wolf Bay in the parallel universe in which she's been trapped, because of that cost.

He knows that without her influence the half human version of himself might be consumed by his rage, as he nearly was when they first met. And no one wants a rampaging Time Lord on their hands, even if he's only got one heart. One of the only times we really hear the Doctor articulate his feelings for Rose is when he tells her that "he needs you and that is very me." So he gives up Rose. Not only for the sake of the universe does he cut himself off from Rose forever, but for hers. This half human Doctor can age and die and live his life with Rose like a normal man. The Doctor gives to Rose the life he wishes he could spend with her. He denies himself. He denies his heart's desire, so that she can have the life he can never give her.

He sacrifices his own happiness for her. When she asks him about the last thing he said to her on this same beach when the wall between the worlds sealed, he cannot tell her that he loves her. Because he knows that if he says it, she will go back with him and lose this, her one chance at happiness. So silent and heartbroken, he leaves. That is love. He gives up what he wants for the sake of the woman he loves. He takes into consideration more than his or her own desires. He considers what is best for her, her family, and the universe. But the love of our culture says that if I can't live without you, I won't live. Think Edward going to the Volturri when he thinks Bella is dead. This isn't romantic; this is a cowardly love. It gives up. Going on living is hard and painful and it aches. And that's what the Doctor does. He keeps living with the pain of that loss. He keeps fighting though he's lost the person he was fighting for. That is why even now when thinking about the Doctor and Rose, my throat gets thick and my vision blurs. Because they had a true love. That, and I'm fairly convinced David Tennant could make me cry just talking about pudding.

This magnificent video captures the essence of what I'm talking about.