Stephen Stills – Love The One You're With lyrics

The lyrics speak of love's many conflicts. The rose is the symbol of love: beautiful and pure, vivid yet delicate. But love is not without its flaws; like a rose, love is wrought with thorns. What someone might love about another can change completely, as the first stanza alludes. Alternately, this part can be interpreted as someone no longer feeling as they once did towards the one they once loved, finding a new lover. The rose in the fisted glove similarly has multiple meanings: it symbolically serves as a warning to handle the hazards of love with care; it also can warn that shielding oneself from the potential pains of love also prevents one from being able to experience the full feeling of love. Finally, the fisted glove can also be a metaphor for a hardened heart, wherein can lie the affection (the rose) one has for someone; no matter how much they attempt to conceal or numb it, the rose will remain. The next line similarly is ambiguously symbolic--the dove, representing peace, and the eagle, representing war, can mean that you stay with your lover in good times and bad. Taken collectively with the other previous parts of the song, the eagle flying with the dove means one experiences a rush of conflicting emotions, as the rose of love struggles from within the clenched fist that tries to suppress it. Adding to it the rest of the chorus: "if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with;" a conclusion can be made that the conflicting emotions are due to not being able to be with the person someone loves. This too, however, can be ambiguously interpreted--the obvious conclusion that the person who is dealing with love's conflicts is trying to weigh two completely different relationships with two completely different people against each other. The possible alternative is that the conflicted individual is torn not between two totally different lovers, but a single person, whose nature is one of the rose kept in the glove, at once able to make their relationship like a dove or an eagle. Ultimately, the singer's advice for the troubled person is to realize their relationship is as good as they make it: "love the one you're with. ".