Right now, love means the chance to be completely connected—body, heart, and soul—with someone I get and who gets me. We think in such similar ways. We are absolutely delighted to see each other every time we see each other. We think of each other all day long.
We can look in each others eyes for hours at a time. We can touch each other lightly and share an electric energy that just works
Love means feeling known and feeling like I matter in the universe. Love means happiness. Love means never worrying about being alone. Our minds are so in tune, it is unbelievable. It’s like we connect with each other and we connect with the whole universe. It is oneness.
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Here are a number of posts I have written in the past about love:
At the beginning it’s an obsession and a high like you can’t believe.
Years later, it is something entirely different.
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The first part of love is an incredible euphoric high.
The next part of love is like waiting for your SAT scores.
Then it’s like figuring out how to solve Rubik’s cube.
Then it’s like putting on your favorite slippers and sitting before a fire with a glass of sherry in your hand.
Not necessarily in that order.
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When I fell in love (and I’ve done it a number of times), it started with mutual admiration. More than that, mutual interest and appreciation of each other. You find yourself wanting to spend more time with the person. You enjoy their company so much that you try to be with them as much as you can, and when you’re not with them, you think about them.
They seem perfect to you. Everything they say; everything they do; just seems profoundly moving. You can’t imagine ever doing anything without this person. You feel a glow when in their presence. You want to touch them and they want to touch you, and feel you everywhere and press you tight. Because, after a while, you can’t stand being two different people, and you want to merge your bodies into one. Of course, making love is the closest you can get to that.
Before I ever fell in love the first time… and it was reciprocated, I imagined that making love would be a transcendent experience where you not only merged your bodies, but you merged your consciousnesses. You could think the other person’s thoughts.
Lovemaking is the logical result of loving someone (who isn’t already your relative). It’s the only way to express these feelings so the other person has to totally get it. Lovemaking gives you both such a joy. It feels so good, but not just physically—also emotionally.
Building on this, you continue to spend time together. This is where it starts to get tough. Will your good feelings for the other person stand the test of time? Or will you find out more about them and discover they aren’t as perfect as you thought. This is where relationship skills start to become more important. You need to be able to solve problems together (i.e., deal with your fights). You have to be able to feel sure about the other person’s affections. This belief can be challenged by so many things that we see on fluther: flirting, lap dances, other lovers, and more.
If you navigate those shoals without sinking then you can start to believe that your love has legs. Your love deepens because you have experience with the person. You continue to enjoy each other. When you make love, it is such a creative act in a metaphorical sense. It also can be a creative act in reality—creating new life. Making a baby can seem like the perfect expression of love.
In my life, I have found many women who I admire greatly. I could fall in love over and over again, I believe. My life is full with the love of my wife and my children. It is hard for me, emotionally speaking, to understand why there can only be one love at a time. I understand it intellectually, but, right or wrong, I feel like I have enough love for many. It makes me think ‘isn’t life strange?’
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When you aren’t in it and you don’t see anything on the horizon that looks like it could be it, it’s easy not to believe in love. You know you want that feeling because it makes you high and you feel safe and you feel you belong somewhere, but you don’t have it.
Perhaps, you think, you are unlovable. No. Not possible. Therefore love must be a sham. It must not really exist. Or, perhaps you don’t know what love is.
It’s easy to get cynical about love. It’s easy to say it’s just chemicals (hormones). It’s easy to say that people are kind of fooling themselves—not that they don’t feel what they feel, but because it doesn’t mean what they think it means.
What’s up with love? Love ain’t always so easy. It does take faith. Cynicism doesn’t help. Chances are, love will come. It has for billions of others.
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Love
Thinking about what she likes, when you buy food to make dinner, no matter what you would prefer. Imagining her reaction for everything you do when you are not with her. Working your ass off so you both can be comfortable. Wanting to make children together, and bring them up together. Always being on the same team, no matter how pissed off you are at her. Getting her back, as she gets yours.
Taking two years to decide what carpet to buy. Staying with her even when you feel disconnected, believing that, somehow, you’ll get that feeling again. Lighting up when she smiles. Getting that warm wiggle in your tummy when she looks happy. Knowing that both of you think there is no sacrifice too big to make the other one feel good.
Putting up with her mother, her sisters, and her sister’s husbands without throwing your drink in their faces. Watching chick flicks. Not watching football all day on both Saturday and Sunday. Lying next to her rubbing her shoulders even though you’d much rather be fluthering. Urging her, for the thousandth time, to take care of herself, to think she’s worth taking care of, and to not feel like everything has to be so perfect.
Riding your bike for miles so you can lose some weight. Using the CPAP machine so she can sleep. Closing the door to the bedroom (which makes it stifling), so she isn’t worrying about the kids wandering in. Turning the thermostat up to 78, even though you are making damp spots appear all over your shirt.
Love is a million things you do with her in mind, because you want her to feel good. Because you never stop thinking about her, somewhere in the back of your mind.
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What if you were married with kids but you fell in love with someone else? You’re not in love with your wife/husband anymore but being with this new person means that you have to start all over (ex. New house and start paying child support, etc) well what would you do for the sake of love?
When I try to imagine being in this situation, I keep getting stuck. It’s like deciding between your loyalty to your family and loyalty to yourself. No matter what you do, someone will be hurt. That someone will be someone you love—theoretically. I’ve not always loved myself. If I were in one of those places where I didn’t love myself, then I might grasp at love as a way of learning to love myself.
Anyway, it boggles my mind trying to sort it out. I know that the conventional wisdom is to stay with your marriage. It’s not possible, in this society, to have multiple wives. So that’s out. Besides which, many women won’t tolerate another who shares the affections of their spouse.
I could see myself going back and forth and around and around on this. Would I change my whole life and start over for love? Absolutely—if that were the only consideration. I’d do that at the drop of a hat. Would I stay with my wife and children and everything I have built in my life? Absolutely! My children are incredibly important, as is my wife. It’s really one love against the other. One is stable and yet unfulfilling at some fundamental level. The other offers the promise of the imagined, perfect life.
That fantasy can be very powerful, I think. It can seem more real than reality. It can make you believe that its reality is just around the corner. And that might make you mistrust your judgment. Are you seeing a mirage of your own making, or is this real? And you’ll never know unless you try it, and if you don’t try it, you may come to be satisfied with what you have, and you may end up kicking yourself for the rest of your life about what you never tried.
Then again, it might not even matter. It might not matter what society thinks or what your loved ones think. This is the only life you have. You can make yourself believe that anything is good. So you just make a choice. Maybe for what seems to offer the most completeness, or maybe for what seems to offer the most safety.
Maybe you don’t even try to decide. You leave it to fate; to chance to see what happens. Life throws all kinds of choices at us. There’s no telling what will come up, and right and wrong are not necessarily the paradigms you want to live by. Life can be very complicated, I think. Some questions are not easy for some people to answer. Not everyone has the certainty that some rule-based moral code might bring. It doesn’t matter, though. No matter what code you live by, when a situation like that happens, you have to make a choice at some point, and then you have to live with the consequences of that choice
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What do you do for love?
Come home early instead of hanging out with friends; massage her feet; never see an action flick; minimize the football… all for love! ;-)
