This was an email in response to my friend AJ. She asked how I decided to fall in love with my partner. This was my response:
I don't think we decide who we love. If we did, why would people choose to love the same sex (when that would cause discrimination), abusive people, or anyone who leds to negativity or anxiety? Why deal with all the BS when you could choose not to? The few people I loved romantically, I didn't choose. Something initially attracted me to them, I got to know them, and my feelings grew. None of them would have been a convenient choice. None of us lived in the same location which is a huge barrier. My current partner and I have quite different beliefs and goals in life. We share enough interests and attraction to overcame to our differences, but if we could rationally choose, following logic, we might choose practicality and convenience. That would be easiest. There are plenty of fish in the sea.
From my experiences and other's anecdotes, most of what we call falling in love is lust and infatuation. We love how that person makes us feel about ourselves. At some point those feelings evolve and become something more like what most people call love and eventually unconditional love. I don't know how or if that falling in love phase can last. People, situations, and everything changes in unpredictable ways. But that's getting into another rant for another day.
Love seems to create the balance we never knew we needed… and something we may not be evolutionarily capable of understanding- if understanding is really needed at all for love to exist in the first place? Isn’t that odd? We know it exists, we can feel that it does exist and yet, we cannot explain IT much at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if we can ever really see the choice that we make to form the first act of love. I think the choice of love, is in remaining open to the possibilities that it can create- the creation that two people can make that one can never make alone for a number of reasons- two pairs of hands and minds can often build more effective houses.
In a sense, I rarely choose to describe the act of love with the particular verb of falling because to me, love never feels sloppy…it feels so intent and sharp, even within the chaos of it all. it feels like, as cliché as it may sound, more along the lines of taking flight, soaring...it feels like a leaf in the wind- like the ground and the people and the worry and care of the most simple tasks become irrevocably invisible. It's you and them. The excitement lifts the energy up and the passion moves you forward and flips you around a few times in whatever direction it feels like. Love feels like MOVEMENT to the greatest degree- like some type of friction- like play, like the act of sex itself or a play in which we may or may not win, but a game in which we are absolutely ok to just remain the player.
"I don't know if people are meant to be with one person forever". I'm not so sure either...but the interesting part is that we have often already played this game before this type of forever become true...for me anyway. I have already played and lost and won and lost again and then finally remain consistent- and now, from this point forward, does this mean that this is when my "forever" starts? If that's so, then forever didn't start until this particular person came along. I love how we have felt different definitions of forever...each new person who we have fallen in love with could have been that forever..? probably not, well, assuredly not now, but it sure felt possible at the time for some of them.
Forever is our current reality. I often think that I could have lived forever with different people, but that my life would have been totally different as well- not just with them, but location, career, etc. I would have chosen a different Life. Could I have done it? Sure. But, I wanted this one…I chose this life. And this particular love. And so did they.
I was describing to my brother that exact flip you mention about the evolution of ecstatic love into a form of unconditional love...for me, it felt like at the beginning of the relationship I was most worried about myself, my happiness, my wants, desires, me needs to find and define and know that this so-called love was just that- love…for possibly the first 2-3 years of my relationship. After the third year the transition from me to them started to blur. I don’t necessarily agree or feel that two people become one, but I definitely physically, emotionally, and spiritually feel that there is a bridge that is built between the two…a some sort of communicational time field that allows energy to pass in more beautiful ways on bridge so unique to those two people that it could not be done with another in quite the same way. That two people share one bridge that only they can cross over into each other’s lives…but must still mind the bridge Trolls underneath. Sometimes that bridge is freely open, sometimes there needs to be a password, but eventually the bridge becomes shared “property”….and that feels like an evolution. Different types of communication become more important and others fade.
Love is about existing in two different lands and being able to build and walk across the bridge. Love is about being the most curious about what’s on the other side…and remaining curious…or does curiosity also eventually morph into appreciation?
three and a half years later! Haha, I could never write that email now. Although I still agree with that past me.
DeleteYour bridge metaphor is perfect. I might borrow that from you in the future.
I think we need a Ranted meaning of Love update from MR. G.- now that you have a few more definitions and layered years of experience under your belt.
DeleteI donʻt think many speak on the love within long term relationships enough- so much of the meaning I had associated with this idea of love was in romantic infatuation, falling in love and newly being in love. I would love to hear your thoughts on the extended version + addition of children in love.