My Love Story by Tina Turner

Although social media and rom coms would like us to believe that love is frequent and young, it isn’t. It’s rare and fleeting. You enjoy it when you can and while you can. Falling in love has no deadline or rush. no matter how much you search for it or want it. Love comes in its own time and at a specific time. Rushing love before discovering oneself degrades love and the chance for it, something Tina Turner reminds us all of.

Tina Turner is already infamous for being a surviver and a pop icon, but you might not know her love story. Truthfully, neither did I. Hearing her story, how she became who she was, all the life she lived before finding that love reminded me—and I’m assuming many of her readers and fans—that although life goes by quickly there’s still a lot of it to live. A lot of stories to gain and pain to endure, a career to find and hobbies to create, so many things left to discover and uncover, one’s left to wonder: why are we in such a rush to find love? If it’s not the right time for a fantasy, couldn’t it quickly turn into a nightmare?

I guess that could be the argument for what happened with Tina Turner and Ike. Don’t get me wrong, Ike was horrible, he was a horrible man for her, for mankind, for everyone and anyone. He was a nightmare in his own skin and ensured that darkness followed him wherever he went. And as Tina said, it wasn’t love that brought them together, but their situation. They were a family and a duo; a couple and a business. Their marriage wasn’t love, but a rush for stability and security, a rush for the parameters of love without the heartbeat.

Reading her story, the discovery and commitment between her and Erwin Bach is beautiful and horrifying. The things they give one another—and no, I do not mean body parts—I mean true sacrifice. Which is that of relinquishing one’s comfort, what one knows, their safe spaces. Turner moved internationally. Bach waited nearly a decade between proposals. They endured their fair share of health and sickness, a merry-go-round of success and projects, they are one another’s ladder to the stars.

My Love Story showcases such maturity and hindsight, it reminds us all why love isn’t a one-time purchase, lottery-winner sorta deal. To love another person you must be able to love yourself. To know how to love someone else you must know how to love your self. And between each and every one of these essential statements are the ties of communication. Not everyone loves in the same way and not every one can adjust to how you either need to be loved or what love feels like and looks like to others. For some people, it’s a simple message in the morning from those they hold near and for others its squeezing out the dirty sponge after doing the dishes. “Different strokes for different folks,” as some people would say.

But if it were Tina, she’d say, “What’s love gotta to do, gotta to do with it?” And the answer is, absolutely nothing. Love didn’t solve any of her problems, didn’t build her a family or home, didn’t erase who she was and the things she’s done. All it’s done is made each day a little better, but it didn’t make her or her life. Reading her love story is a beautiful reminder of the oxymoronic nature of love, it is simple in everything it offers humanity, but complex in execution.

So I’ll ask you now, “What’s love gotta to of, gotta do with it?”